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AN 



ORATION 



DELIVERED AT 



CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS, 



ON THE 17TH OF JUNE, 1841, 



IN COMMEMORATION OF 



THE BATTLE OF BUNKER-HILL. 



BY GEORGE E. ELLIS. 




BOSTON: 

WILLIAM CROSBY AND CO.; 

No. 118, ■Washington Street. 

1841. 



DUTTON AND WENTWORTH'S PRINT. 
Exchange Street, Soatoa. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



This Oration was prepared and delivered at the request of the Officers 
and Members of the "Warren Phalanx," who celebrated this interesting 
anniversary in an appropriate manner, in conjunction with the citizens of 
Charlestown, whose participation they invited. In compliance with their 
wish, kindly and politely expressed, these pages are now published. Large 
portions, here printed, were necessarily omitted in the delivery. The 
author aimed to present a fair and minute account of the memorable action 
in this town which opened the American Revolution. He could find no 
nearer beginning for the details of the day, than in a statement of the 
preliminary measures of British aggression and Colonial resistance, and 
the appropriate conclusion of the narrative seemed to require an exhibition 
of some of the results of the bloody conflict. We are probably now in 
possession of all that ever will be known concerning it. One who searches 
deeply into its history, is led to ask some questions to which no Uving 
voice or written record can give an answer. The author has availed him- 
self of all the known existing means for affording information and ensuring 
accuracy. The History of the Battle, by Col. Samuel Swett, is the most 
valuable of all the documents which relate to it. For a few particulars 
mentioned in the following pages, wliich are not derived from any public 
documents, it is to be understood that the author is indebted to some pri- 
vate sources of information. 



ORATION. 



Soldiers and Fellow Citizens, — 

By thus addressing the united and mingled throng 
before me, I can best declare the occasion and the result 
which we have assembled gratefully to commemorate. 
We have cause to congratulate ourselves that we live day 
after day upon a spot which is known over the world, to 
history and to fame. It is our privilege to behold, at our 
pleasure, the morning glories of a summer's sun from the 
beautiful summit which rises behind us, and thence to 
trace the land-marks and the water-lines signalized 
through all time, and for all people, by the action which 
we now celebrate. The name of that green eminence 
has already become familiar over the civilized world, and, 
saving the unchristian passions and sins which war neces- 
sarily involves, it has no association, record or story, 
which we may not remember and repeat with pride. 

How beautiful, how sublime is the prospect which from 
that eminence greets our eyes ! We occupy the central 
point of a circle over which nature and art, war and 
peace, the history of the past, the happiness of the pres- 
ent, and the hope of the future, spread an inexhaustible 
interest. The great features of a battle scene, which 
yields in importance to no other on the surface of the 
earth, scarred as it is all over its circumference with such 



6 



melancholy memorials, are before our eyes. Across those 
calm blue waves is the land of the ancient enemy ; the 
land where a misguided and tyrannical Monarch, a proud 
and heartless Ministry, and a subservient Parliament de- 
vised their fruitless measures for the subjugation of a 
people who owed them nothing for debt or favor ; the 
land whence had come the hired soldiery then quartered 
upon the forced hospitality, and riotously disturbing the 
peace of the town of Boston. In that secure and beau- 
tiful harbor floated the ships of war, and the transports 
just arrived from Britain, which sent their military crew 
upon this shore, only to die upon the first spot of Ameri- 
can soil which their feet should touch. Then we survey 
the fair and diversified peninsula upon which we stand, 
comprehending with its summits and its levels, but a 
square mile of earth. The south-eastern slope of Breed's 
Hill divides the waters of the bay into two broad rivers, 
which indent the shore, and just beyond the western base 
of Biuiker's Hill, approach so near each other as to allow 
scarcely four hundred feet of breadth to the neck of land 
which unites the peninsula to the neighboring country. 
The Mystic on the north, washes with its double channel 
the farther shore. On the south, the opposite side of the 
mouth of the Charles, which in its narrowest span is 
about three hundred yards across, we see the now crowd- 
ed peninsula of Boston, similarly environed by the waters 
of the sea, and united to the main land by a narrow neck. 
Upon a sloping eminence of that peninsula where it ap- 
proaches nearest to us, we discern a place of graves, amid 
which was planted the battery whence came the missiles 
that reduced this flourishing town to a desolation. Around 
us is a glorious amphitheatre of hill tops, which sixty-six 
years ago on this hour were alive with anxious crowds, 
now covered over with flourishing villages, intersected 
and bordered by the highest achievements of modern art 
and science. Nowhere else upon the face of the earth is 
there such a congeries of striking objects, written over 



with such moving narratives of virtue, and courage, and 
prosperity. The battle fields of ancient times, of the four 
ancient empires, have lost their landmarks — most of them 
now depend upon conjecture ; but very few of them can 
be accurately defined, and more than all, the results of 
their awful carnage do not now appear in the free and 
vigorous life of either of those four proud empires of the 
ancient world. The plains and hill tops of later strife 
cannot all connect themselves with the religious cause 
and the blessed result, which have made that eminence 
so full of glory. Ours is the battle field of valor vindi- 
cating only the right, and made subservient to justice — 
of chivalry led on to self-sacrifice by christian prayers and 
the affections of a fire-side life — of a determination to do 
nothing for blood, but every thing for the free birthright, 
for the lawful possession of the labor of the hands, for 
the full privileges which every human being may and 
should enjoy without doing a wrong to any other of his 
race. Here are the fruits of that day's carnage, — the 
ocean traversed by ships freighted with the means of hap- 
piness, not with the instruments of woe, from that most 
renowned of nations from which we are proud to trace 
our origin, — the hill tops smiling with the blessings 
which God gives to labor, and which man may enjoy, 
when he has earned them by labor, — the temples of reli- 
gion reared and reverenced by the consciences of the wor- 
shippers, — the homes and the families where the privi- 
leges of freedom confer the highest authority upon civil 
laws, and social duties, and religious charities. Not in 
vain were the death-dealing engines of war discharged 
upon that summit. 

Amid the scenes, and upon the day thus consecrated to 
proud and grateful recollections, we are met in peace, 
with the blessings of peace all around us. We come 
together as the citizens of a town, which, though it takes 
its name from a king, bears inscribed upon the brightest, 
yet most melancholy page of its annals, the bold resist- 



8 

ance here made to a tyrant. We come as citizens of our 
common republic, to commemorate the deeds of our fath- 
ers, as they in their trials and death-struggles hoped and 
believed that we should recal their memories amid joyful 
and grateful observances. 

This day has its appointed theme, its appropriate sub- 
ject. After the lapse of so many years, and after so much 
research, information and eloquence, brought to the delin- 
eation of that battle — while tradition yet keeps the story 
fresh, and living witnesses, venerable with their hoary 
locks and bowed frames, still survive — the subject for this 
day can have but little of novelty. The theme itself, 
familiar as it is, must furnish its own interest. As from 
time to time this day shall be celebrated upon this spot, it 
will be the aim of the orator to bring to the illustration of 
his subject all the historical facts which throw light upon 
the story ; — to clear it from all confusion in its details, 
that it may descend to posterity distinctly and fairly told ; 
■ — to expound those eternal principles of right and justice, 
the violation of which by one party, and the defence of 
which by another party, have made this day forever 
memorable; — to trace down the influence of that righteous 
war, and of this its opening conflict ; — and last of all to 
enforce its lessons of gratitude and duty. 

The American Revolution occurred at such an era of 
the intellectual and moral progress of civil and social life, 
that even the school-boy might thoroughly understand 
and estimate the reasons which justified that long and 
dreadful struggle. That struggle was brought to its issue 
only by many successive and increasing wrongs inflicted 
upon our fathers. 

Among all the factitious and theoretical systems which 
relate to the connection which ought to be maintained 
between a colony and the mother country, I can recognise 
but one principle or condition that is founded upon the 
essential laws of justice and order, and that is, that those 
who voluntarily emigrate from their native land, and 



subdue and people a wilderness, should themselves be the 
sole judges as to the extent and nature of the connection 
which they will still maintain with their native land. If 
they choose to seek its protection — to acknowledge a de- 
pendence on their part — to refer to it for authority in their 
laws — to bow before the distant sceptre, and to mimic the 
forms and proceedings of the mother country — so let it 
be. But let it be understood that they act from choice, 
voluntarily, not by compulsion, nor in deference to any 
laws of nature or of equity. Compulsion ! The word 
has no meaning in this connection — and if without a 
meaning it is still made to enforce an unjust claim, let the 
claim be resisted till nothing is left worthy of its further 
urging. If, however, that colony seeks the protection of 
the mother country, and establishes precedents by its 
authority, and receives help in its necessities from the 
mother country — then the claims of justice are answered 
by a measure of obedience conformed to the stipulation, 
by proper deference to the authority so established, and 
by payment, in kind or in value, for all assistance asked 
and received. 

Upon this broad principle of justice, it would seem to 
me the simplest of all arguments to justify our fathers in 
asserting and maintaining their Independence of the Brit- 
ish Crown, had there been even no grievances for them to 
resist. The founders of the New England Colonies, at 
least, were driven forth from their home by oppression — 
they twice purchased the land they occupied, once of 
English Patentees, once of the native red-men. They 
made the wilderness habitable by their own unpaid labor, 
and by their own honestly earned wealth. They never 
sought the shelter of a foreign throne, nor the protection 
of a foreign army, and when upon these rock-defended 
and wood-covered hills, the colonists had attained a vig- 
orous manhood — God, and nature, and justice, made them 
free. Yet when Britain, loaded with public and private 
debts by almost universal hostilities with the other powers 
2 



10 

of the earth, looked around for aid in bearing the burden, 
a bright vision passed before the eyes of the royal coun- 
sellors, of vast and shining heaps of revenue to be gath- 
ered from taxing the colonies, colonies too not represented 
even in the lower house of legislature, where alone the 
money of the people could be voted out of their hands. 
The moment the news of that ministerial counsel reached 
these shores, it was received with lowering looks, and 
with a resolution which never could be made to yield and 
never would yield. I can express the etfect which the 
news produced, in no better way than by a familiar illus- 
tration ; the colonists carefully buttoned their pockets, 
kept their hands close, and waited in silence, as men do 
in a crowd where they are suspicious of some of the un- 
known guests. 

Much as the conduct on the part of the Americans, ot 
the whole strife, was commented upon at the time in 
England, it is remarkable that such a degree of ignorance 
and indifferenee prevailed there concerning it. 

The only shadow of right which could be maintained 
in the pretensions to authority of any kind which Eng- 
land claimed over us, was very much magnified, and 
grossly distorted. That the learned and excellent Dr. 
Johnson should have taken such a part against us, as he 
did in his pamphlet entitled " Taxation, no Tyranny," is 
most unaccountable and wonderful. He recommended 
that the British soldiers should be turned into free quar- 
ters among us, to keep us in awe of England, and that 
the negro slaves should be let loose over the land. Let it 
ever be borne in mind that negro slavery, for the sin and 
inconsistency of which we were so severely satirized dur- 
ing our war of Independence — let it ever be borne in 
mind, that negro slavery was introduced into these colo- 
nies and perpetuated here by the influence of the mother 
country, in defiance of the frequently and earnestly ex- 
pressed wishes of the colonists. 

The pretended ground of right upon which England 



11 

claimed a revenue from these colonies, was, that the 
parent state was the sovereign master of its colonies, and 
that ainong the privileges and powers of sovereignty was 
that of taxation. It was urged likewise that our com- 
merce with England was the source of our wealth. 
And was not this commerce also the source of her 
wealth 7 Did we not give in this way, as much as we 
received 7 Again, England made a demand upon the 
gratitude of the colonies. She said we ought to con- 
tribute aid in bearing the public burdens, because they 
were in part incurred in helping us, and especially in de- 
fending us from our hostile neighbors in the French and 
Indian War. A poor pretence was this. If England had 
been asked while prosecuting here the French War, why 
she thus sent her armies to fight on a foreign soil, she 
would scarcely have answered that it was for the protec- 
tion of the colonies. With more of honesty, and in sim- 
ple truth, she would have replied that she fought in self- 
defence, from national pride, and to guard the rights and 
the territory which she supposed to be her own. And as 
to the help which we received from England in that war, 
did we not likewise give help 7 In the dreary campaigns 
and savage slaughters of that war, the native blood of 
New England flowed in streams. It was indeed in the 
rough and hardening experiences of that war that many 
of our own most valiant warriors learned how to fight 
for themselves when their day arrived. But all the 
claims of England for service then given, for favors then 
bestowed, were at the moment counterbalanced by service 
repaid, and by that knowledge of the country and of In- 
dian warfare which our fathers brought to the contest. 
This remuneration was at the time acknowledged, indeed 
it was thought then that we had a claim on England. 
It is remarkable that, in the Parliamentary Debates, the 
very first mention of the American Colonists, after the 
accession of George III. is in a message in which the 
King himself commends and advises compensation for 



12 

the valuable services rendered by our fathers during the 
war of 1756. 

Yet the resistance which our fathers offered to British 
aggression was stigmatised in England as rebellion and 
ingratitude. Only an honest belief of this charge, how- 
ever erroneous it was, can redeem the measures of the 
advisers of an unjust and merciless war, from the impu- 
tation of unmitigated cruelty and gross folly. Meanwhile 
the honest disapprobation of our alledged rebellion and 
ingratitude, though the only justifiable, was by no means 
the only efficient motive of those who sent their merce- 
nary troops across the ocean to fight with native freemen. 
There was an utter ignorance of the true principles of 
wealth and commerce, which would have brought advan- 
tages to England of an infinitely higher value than a rev- 
enue by taxation, had she known her own true interest. 
There was a sordid spirit at work, which induced the 
English freeholders to believe that if we were taxed their 
own burdens would be lighter. With these errors there 
was united the haughty pride of power, the insulting 
estimate of the colonists as mere traders and farmers 
afraid to fight, and the proverbial self-conceit of the Brit- 
ish, which in spite of all their noble, and generous, and 
virtuous traits of character, has on several occasions led 
them to an unjust and tyrannical use of power. 

There always existed in the New England Colonies a 
lurking spirit of opposition to any acts of sovereignty 
which England might attempt to exercise. This spirit 
frequently manifested itself with a most formidable en- 
ergy, and was ready to burst forth on many occasions, 
when, for the sake of policy, or perhaps from the influ- 
ence of timidity, it was kept in reserve. The acts of 
sovereignty which the colonists themselves exercised, in 
utter defiance of all the theories of the allegiance they 
owed to England, were numerous and very bold, and 
they date from the settlement at Boston. The first exhi- 
bition of this spirit which connects itself with the organ- 



13 

ised resistance offered in the Revolutionary "War, occurred 
in the year 1754, on the expectation of the French aggres- 
sions. The Governors and heads of assembhes convened 
at Albany as Provincial Delegates, while adopting meas- 
ures of preparation and defence, proposed to constitute 
themselves a grand council, with legislative and executive 
powers, including of course the power of raising taxes. 
The British ministry wished that such matters should be 
left to the royal Governors with their councils ; but this 
was the Pelham ministry, and prudently, though omi- 
nously, it yielded to the colonists the first step to Inde- 
pendency. 

The taxing of America was first moved in the British 
ParUament by Mr. Greville, in March, 1764. The motion 
was carried into effect by the Stamp Act, which passed 
the House of Commons by a vote of 250 to 50, and the 
House of Lords without debate or dissent, and was ap- 
proved by the King March 22d, 1765. This delay of a 
year in pressing the motion was artfully designed by its 
mover, to afford an opportunity for the colonists to sug- 
gest some other mode of raising the necessary tax, which 
they should prefer. The insinuation was made to the 
colony agents in London, that if their constituents did 
follow the suggestion, they would establish the precedent 
of their being consulted henceforward, whenever Parlia- 
ment proposed a tax. But the colonists were not deceived 
by this gilded bait — they resolutely protested against the 
measure through their agents. This project of taxing all 
legal instruments, bills, receipts and private contracts, was 
followed in the colonies by a Continental Congress at New 
York, which offered remonstrances and petitions, by mobs 
and disorders, by the tolling of bells and the constructing 
and abuse of effigies of obnoxious officers. The stamp 
agents were compelled to resign ; business was transacted 
without the offensive instruments, and was thus of course 
illegal. The act was repealed the next year by the new 
administration, after Pitt had boldly and beautifully 



14 

triumphed in the House of Commons, by denying the 
right of the kingdom to lay a tax upon the colonies. 
This Repeal was accompanied by a Declaratory Act, 
maintaining the power and right of the kingdom to bind 
the colonies in all cases whatsoever. This Declaration 
appears to have been winked at on this side of the water, 
as a salvo for British pride. 

In 1767, under the Townshend administration, several 
measures most obnoxious to the colonists were devised in 
succession, such as import duties on paper, glass, paints 
and teas, a list of civil officers to be named by the Crown, 
with salaries fixed at his pleasure, a requisition for pro- 
viding articles of food and clothing for the soldiers, at the 
expense of the colonies, together with the establishment 
of a custom house, and a board of commissioners. These 
measures were all followed by intense excitements of the 
people, and led to protective combinations. In 1770 Lord 
North brought about the repeal of the new duties, with 
the exception of that upon tea, which was retained for 
the purpose of upholding the disputed right of taxation. 
The massacre, as it was called, in Boston, on March 5th, 
in which three of the inhabitants were killed, and five 
others wounded in an affray with the soldiers, well nigh 
maddened the populace. From that time there was a 
continued succession of insurrections and hostilities. 

There seems to have been not only profound wisdom 
and valuable experience, but a spirit of prophecy like- 
wise, in the eloquent warning which was addressed to 
the House of Commons by our former Governor Pownall, 
who knew well the people of whom he spoke. Happy 
would it have been if the House had listened to his warning 
instead of being impatient under it, as we are told it was. 

"The slightest circumstance will now in a moment 
throw every thing into confusion and bloodshed ; and if 
some mode of policy does not interpose to remove this 
exertion of military power, the union between Great Brit- 
ain and North America is broken forever ; unless, what is 



15 

worse, both are united in a common ruin. That spirit 
which led their ancestors to break off from every thing 
which is near and dear to the human heart, has but a 
shght and trifling sacrifice to make at this time ; they have 
not to quit their native country, but to defend it ; not to 
forsake their friends and relations, but to unite with, and 
stand by them in one common union," &c. 

An Act of Parliament in 1764, in anticipation of ex- 
treme measures, had empowered the King to station a 
military force in any province, and to quarter it upon the 
people. This act was not immediately enforced, but in 
1767, some troops of the royal artillery arrived in Boston, 
and Governor Bernard made provision for their support at 
the castle, at the expense of the province, without author- 
ity thus to vote away money. He dissolved the General 
Court, and refused to call it together again. The people 
of Boston and of the neighboring towns formed and re-es- 
tablished their combinations against the importation and 
consumption of British goods, of tea, of foreign fruit, and 
articles of mourning apparel, recommending likewise 
great prudence and economy. 

As the people were deprived of their General Court, a 
Convention of Delegates from more than a hundred 
towns assembled in Boston, in September, 1768, and sat 
several days. They requested the Governor to call to- 
gether the General Court, but he refused. Their meas- 
ures were judicious and calm, but resolute ; they advised 
the observance of a day of fasting and prayer, and that 
the people should provide themselves with fire-arms. At 
the close of the Convention two more regiments arrived. 
They were quartered in Boston, in defiance of the earnest 
objections of the people and the council. They marched 
through the town in battle-array, and occupied the Com- 
mon, the State House, the Court House, and Faneuil 
Hall. The people looked on in amazement, but they did 
not fear. 

Governor Bernard was re-called to England August 1, 



16 

1769, and was succeeded by Lieutenant Governor Hutch- 
inson, who followed up the measures of his predecessor, 
delaying at his pleasure the convoking of the General 
Court, and then arbitrarily summoning it to assemble at 
Cambridge. There were now about 2000 British troops 
in Boston. As they had been kept for a time in close 
quarters, the people had not received from them any prov- 
ocations beyond that of their unwelcome presence. But 
in the winter of 1770 they had been allowed to walk 
about the streets in little squads, and their language and 
conduct were often insulting. It might have been fore- 
seen that outrages like that upon the 5tli of March would 
ensue. The resolute remonstrances of the people pro- 
cured the removal of the troops from Boston to the castle. 
Discontent and bold resistance gradually ripened the ele- 
ments of civil strife, and it was evident that a great crisis 
approached. The destruction of three cargoes of tea, 
belonging to the East India Company, in Boston harbor, 
I in 1773, was a plain evidence of the determination of the 
people to resist the duty which Lord North's bill had left 
to be exacted on that import. At the session of the Gen- 
eral Court, in May, 1773, a committee was appointed to 
open a correspondence with the committees of other colo- 
nies on political subjects, and it was this step which led 
to the convention of a Continental Congress at Philadel- 
phia, The people had petitioned the King for the imme- 
diate removal of Governor Hutchinson, who in letters to 
England had made unfair and prejudicial representations 
of the state of things in this colony. He sailed for Eng- 
land in June, 1774. His house had been destroyed by a 
mob, and his property and papers scattered to the winds. 
He was succeeded by General Gage, the commander in 
chief of the British forces in America. 

If England had not then a Stuart for a monarch, she 
had a Stuart ministry. Infatuation seems to be the only 
appropriate word by which to designate their galling accu- 
mulation of abuses and restrictions upon the colonists. 



17 

who had already given sufficient evidence of their indom- 
itable resolution to resist. Next came the appointment of 
the Governor's counsellors by the King, instead of by 
the Court, as heretofore, and finally the climax of minis- 
terial delusion in which, upon June 1, 1774, a Parliament- 
ary bill declared that Boston Port should be closed 
against all commerce and navigation, and be in a state of 
blockade. The passage of this bill was procured under 
the expectation that the other ports of this and the other 
colonies would delight in the humiliation of Boston, and 
selfishly seize the opportunity thus put into their power 
of drawing commerce to themselves. Here again did the 
ministry delude itself by another gross miscalculation. 
The eifect of the bill was wholly opposite to their expec- 
tations. Numberless copies of it were quickly multiplied 
and circulated over the continent, having, as Burke said, 
the inflammatory effect which the poets ascribe to the 
fury's torch. Copies of the bill printed on mourning 
paper, with a black border, were hawked in the streets of 
New York and Boston, under the title of " a bar! arous, 
cruel, bloody and inhuman murder." In other places, 
the populace being called together by placards, burnt the 
bill with great solemnity. The General Court of Massa- 
chusetts recommended to the other colonies to suspend all 
commercial intercourse with Great Britain, and formed a 
solemn league and covenant against the use of English 
goods, though General Gage threatened all the subscribers 
of it with transportation to England for treason. 

Within four months after the receipt of the Boston Port 
Bill, the deputies of twelve provinces, representing three 
millions of people, were convened at Philadelphia. Loyal 
and constitutional sentiments there found an honorable 
reception, and conciliatory measures on the part of Britain 
would even then have been of avail. Yet it was easy to 
see that allegiance to the throne was a word which was 
fast becoming of an empty sound throughout the conti- 
nent. The sufferings to which the people of Boston were 
3 



18 

subjected were relieved by generous contributions through- 
out the country. General Gage removed the Court from 
Boston to Salem, where it met by adjournment on June 
7th, but on the 17th he sent his messenger to announce 
its dissolution. The messenger was shut out of doors, 
while the Court, before obeying the summons, chose their 
first delegates to the General Congress, Gushing, Samuel 
and John Adams, Paine and Bowdoin. About this time 
independent military companies were formed in Boston. 
General Gage began to assume despotic power, as the 
successive encroachments upon the chartered liberties of 
the people brought on the unavoidable issue. He ordered 
military stores from New York, he collected powder from 
the neighboring towns, sent out agents to survey the 
country, and erected strong fortifications on Boston neck. 
This last measure, which amounted to a shutting out of 
all intercourse between the people in Boston and the en- 
virons, by land as well as by sea, was regarded as an 
outrage which ought not to be endured. But he alleged 
that the object of the fortifications was to prevent the fre- 
quent desertions of his soldiers. 

Delegates from the different towns met at Salem in 
October, and there constituted the Provincial Congress of 
Massachusetts. A committee of this body was directed 
to ascertain the character and amount of the military 
stores in the province, and to encourage military disci- 
pline. The taxes were turned from the authorised pro- 
vincial treasurer to a new officer then appointed, a Com- 
mittee of Safety, with executive authority, was chosen 
to act after the adjournment, and three general officers. 
Colonels Ward, Thomas and Pom'eroy, were invested 
with the command of the provincial military. Before 
that Congress met again, another warning voice was lift- 
ed, in solemn tones, to counsel the mother country. On 
the 20th of January, 1775, Lord Chatham, after long 
retirement and severe bodily suffering, rose in the House 
of Lords. He foretold the event of these ruinous meas- 



19 

ures, he implored the nation to pause and consider, and 
then proposed that a humble request be made to the King 
to require General Gage to evacuate Boston. But the 
voice of warning was not heeded. The Provincial Con- 
gress met again by adjournment in February, 1775, 
organised their committees, arranged their correspond- 
ence, and provided military preparations and stores, 
designating Worcester and Concord as places of deposit. 
General Gage was well informed of all these proceedings, 
and hearing of some stores at Salem or Danvers, he sent 
one hundred and fifty men to seize them. But the 
attempt was rendered fruitless by resistance on the way. 
There was a third session of the Congress in March, 
when vigorous measures were adopted. Large companies 
were organised, composed of men who held themselves 
ready for service at a minute's warning. More British 
troops arrived, and General Gage was equally determined 
to pursue his blind and misguided measures. Nor were 
legislative enactments the only grievances of which the 
people complained ; insults and indignities of various 
kinds were offered them by officers and Soldiers, which 
annoyed and vexed the citizens. The 16th of March had 
been consecrated as a day of Fasting and Prayer by the 
Provincial Congress. While the Society were assembling 
in the Church at West Boston, the regulars pitched two 
marquee tents within ten yards of the house, and contin- 
ued with fifes and drums to disturb the service. At the 
commemoration of the 5th of March massacre, in the 
Old South Church, the patriot Samuel Adams courteously 
placed about forty British officers, who came to hear 
Warren's Oration, in the best seats, and they listened in 
quietness. At its close, Adams moved that an orator be 
chosen for the ensuing 5th March, to commemorate "the 
bloody and horrid massacre, perpetrated by a party of 
soldiers under the command of Captain T. Preston." 
His motion was received with hisses and cries from the 
officers, when great confusion ensued. 



20 

On the 8th of the month, a countryman (Thomas Dit- 
son) from Billerica, while buying a musket in Boston, 
was seized by the regulars and covered with tar and 
feathers. He was carried through the streets on a truck, 
guarded by twenty soldiers with fixed bayonets, a label 
being attached to his back inscribed " American Liberty, 
or a Specimen of Democracy," while a promiscuous 
crowd, of officers, negroes and sailors followed, and the 
drums and fifes played " Yankee Doodle," a tune used 
by the British in ridicule of the provincials. The select- 
men of Billerica sent a remonstrance to General Gage, 
and told him if it did not answer the purpose, they should 
"hereafter use a different style from that of petition and 
complaint." Colonel Hancock's house was twice assault- 
ed during the month, when the fence and the windows 
were destroyed by the soldiers. On the night of the 18th 
the Providence coach was attacked as it entered the town, 
and its passengers were abused, but the driver, leaping 
from his seat, inflicted a severe castigation upon the Brit- 
ish Captain Gore. These are but specimens of the many 
riots, outrages and indignities, which maddened the peo- 
ple of the town and of the province. 

Such were the ministerial enactments, the public griev- 
ances and the military outrages, which were preparing 
the way for a civil war. It was evident that only an 
occasion was necessary to confront the foreign invaders, 
and the citizens of the soil, in two opposing armies. 
That occasion presented itself on the 19th of April, when 
General Gage, without provocation, warrant or justifica- 
tion, sent a body of troops to Concord to seize upon the 
military stores there deposited. Those troops on their 
way, going beyond their orders, wrong as they were, 
made an attack upon a few militia-men at Lexington, 
and then ensued the fight at Concord. It was a most in- 
glorious exploit for his Majesty's regulars, for as the coun- 
try people had good warning of their purpose, it was but 
poorly accomplished, and they were forced to retreat. 



21 

marking their homeward way by a hne of killed and 
womided, shot from the shelter of houses, woods, walls 
and fences, by the incensed comitry people. That das- 
tardly enterprise was not even sanctioned by ministerial 
authority, when the news reached England, though an 
attempt was made to charge upon the provincials the sin 
of striking the first offensive blow. The Congress of the 
colony instituted inquiries and procured certified affida- 
vits, which proved that both at Lexington and at Con- 
cord, the first fire was discharged by the British. That 
aggression upon the liberties of the people was equally 
unauthorised and exasperating. On the 22d of the month 
the Provincial Congress again assembled, voted to raise at 
once thirteen thousand men, to rally at Cambridge and the 
neighborhood, and asked aid from the other provinces, to 
which Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire res- 
ponded. The forts, magazines and arsenals were secured 
for the country. Then, for the first time, the title of ene- 
mies was given to the British, and General Gage was de- 
no anced as the agent of tyranny and oppression. An 
account of the battle at Lexington was sent to England, 
and an address, closing thus : "Appealing to heaven for 
the justice of our cause, we determine to die or be free." 

By advice received from Lord Dartmouth, the head of 
the War Department, General Gage issued a Proclama- 
tion on the 12th of June, in which he declared the dis- 
contents to be in a state of rebellion, offered full pardon 
to all, with the exception of Hancock and Adams, who 
would lay down their arms and bow to his authority, and 
announced that martial law was now in force. 

This proclamation, issued on the first day of the w€*ek, 
was to be illustrated by a fearful commentary before an- 
other Sabbath came. For we have thus entered upon 
that week in our history when was fought the battle 
which has made that green summit the first altar of our 
country's freedom. 

Of the 15,000 troops then gathered, by the cry of war, 



22 

at Cambridge and Roxbury, under the command of Gen- 
eral Ward, about 10,000 belonged to Massachusetts, and 
the remainder to New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Con- 
necticut. They constituted an irregular and imdisci- 
plined army, without accoutrements, or any other uni- 
form than their working suits. Recruits and stragglers 
were continually coming in. Yet many of those provin- 
cial soldiers, though undisciplined by any thing like reg- 
ular service, were by no means unused to the severities 
and obligations of a military life, having had experience 
in the Indian and French wars. One regiment of artil- 
lery, with nine field-pieces, had been raised in Massa- 
chusetts, and put under command of the famous engineer, 
Colonel Gridley, but it was not yet thoroughly organised. 
A self-constituted Provincial Congress discharged the 
legislative functions, and a Committee of Safety, elected 
by the Congress, filled the executive place of Governor 
and Council, and confined their functions chiefly to mili- 
tary directions. 

There were in fact four independent armies then united 
in resistance to the foreign enemy. The forces then gath- 
ered in the neighborhood did not constitute a national 
army, for there was then no nation to own them ; they 
were not under the authority of the Continental Congress, 
for the authority of that Congress was not as yet acknowl- 
edged; nor had that Congress as yet recognised those 
forces. Neither were the troops from Connecticut, Rhode 
Island and New Hampshire^ subject to the command of 
General Ward, save as the friendly purpose which led 
them to volunteer their arms in defence of a sister colony, 
would be accompanied by the courtesy that would make 
them subordinate allies. These independent armies could 
act in concert only by yielding themselves to the influ- 
ence of the common spirit which called them together. 
General Ward was a judicious and conscientious patriot, 
had served the colony in high civil and judicial stations, 
and in the French war, in which he was a Lieutenant 



23 

Colonel, had earned some military experience and fame. 
Lieutenant General Thomas, Avho accepted his commis- 
sion on May 27, was distinguished for talents, patriotism 
and military reputation ; he was second in command. 
General Pomeroy, likewise famous in the border war, 
continued to serve under the appointment of the Provin- 
cial Congress. General Putnam preceded his Connecticut 
troops, in hurrying to the scene of war, on the news of 
the battle of Lexington. His men soon followed him 
with like enthusiasm. The New Hampshire troops, on 
their arrival at Medford, made choice of Colonel Stark as 
their leader. Colonel Green commanded a regiment 
from Rhode Island. 

The semicircle of headlands, slopes, points and emi- 
nences, united by green levels and extending over ten or 
twelve miles, which we may now see from yonder sum- 
mit, in all the beauty of its summer garb, was then cov- 
ered by the wide-spread wings of our citizen army. A 
part of Colonel Gerrish's regiment from Essex and Mid- 
dlesex, and a detachment of New Hampshire troops, sta- 
tioned on the hills of Chelsea, formed the tip of its left wing, 
and all along the eastern sea-board to Cape Ann and Ports- 
mouth, were watchful spies on the alert to spread the 
alarm, if the British should attempt an entrance at any 
of the ports. Colonels Reed and Stark, next in the line, 
were stationed at Medford with their New Hampshire 
regiments. Lechmere's Point, at East Cambridge, was 
guarded against a hostile landing, to which it offered 
great facilities, by parts of Colonel Little's and other reg- 
iments. General Ward, with the main body of about 
9,000 troops, and four companies of artillery, occupied 
Cambridge, while all the points of high land, the farms, 
and the main roads, were cautiously defended. Lieut. 
General Thomas, with 5,000 troops from Massachusetts, 
Connecticut and Rhode Island, with three or four com- 
panies of artillery, constituted the right wing of the army 
at Roxbury and Dorchester. 



24 

Here was a wide extent of space, approachable by land 
only at Roxbury neck, where the British lines were 
strongly entrenched, assailable at several points by armed 
ships and floating batteries, but protected to a great degree 
by shoal and tide waters, swamps, and intersecting creeks. 
The army was wholly voluntary in its organization, the 
soldiers having enlisted for different periods, depending 
for their daily food upon the provisions sent from their 
several towns. Subordination and obedience to their 
officers were secured and yielded by their respect for those 
Avhose names were familiar to them, as associated with 
magnanimity, enterprise and bravery. 

Such was the constitution and the disposition of the 
American army when the provincials found themselves 
in the singular position of besieging their own chief town 
of Boston. That little peninsula was thus completely 
invested and hemmed in. Several of its inhabitants re- 
mained there from different motives ; some as devoted 
loyalists, some as timid neutrals, some as spies, to watch 
each hostile movement and to communicate it to the col- 
onists. Some of these last, together with many deserters, 
would occasionally cross the water by swimming, or in 
boats, or pass the Roxbury lines and enter the American 
camp by night. Others there were whose anxiety for 
their property induced them to continue in Boston. After 
hostilities had commenced, General Gage of course con- 
sidered the citizens as prisoners. By the spies and de- 
serters our officers generally received full information of 
all that occurred in Boston during the whole time of 
its investment by the British. That word British had 
now become synonymous with enemy, and though the 
regular army encamped in the capital might despise the 
undisciplined multitude which kept it in such close quar- 
ters, it was compelled to regard its opponents as powerful 
and formidable. 

At the time of the battle at Lexington, there were 
about 4,000 British troops in Boston. The number was 



25 

increased to more than 10,000 before the action in this 
town. The best-disciphned and most experienced troops 
in the kingdom, many of them freshly laurelled in the 
recent wars on the European continent, under the com- 
mand of officers equally distinguished, composed the in- 
vading army. Gage, the Governor and Commander in 
Chief, had long resided in America, and had married 
here. He came originally as a lieutenant under Brad- 
dock, and was with the general when he received his 
mortal wound. He had been Governor of Montreal, had 
succeeded General Amherst in command of the British 
forces on this continent, and Hutchinson as Governor of 
Massachusetts. He had constantly and vigorously favor- 
ed the oppressive measures of the ministry which brought 
on the war. He had strongly fortified Boston by a double 
line of intrenchments crossing the neck, and by batteries 
there, and also upon the Common, commanding Roxbury 
and Cambridge, upon Copp's Hill, commanding Charles- 
town, upon Fort Hill and the northern extremity of the 
town, commanding the harbor, and upon West Boston 
Point. There were, besides, at least twenty-five armed 
vessels in the harbor. 

To the inhabitants remaining in Boston, the population 
of which, independent of the military, was then about 
20,000, the troops behaved in an insulting and tyrannical 
manner. To show their Episcopal contempt of Congre- 
gational churches, they removed the pews from the Old 
South, covering the floor with earth, and thus converted 
the edifice into a riding school for Burgoyne's squadron of 
cavalry. The two eastern galleries were allowed to re- 
main, one for spectators, the other for a liquor shop, while 
the fire in the stove was lighted by valuable books from 
the library of a former pastor. Dr. Prince. They de- 
stroyed the steeple of the West Church, because it had 
been used for a signal staff", while they burnt the Old 
North, and several dwelling houses, for fuel. The pro- 
vincials, in their Congregational contempt of Episcopalian 
4 



26 

churches, could only retaliate by using the English 
Church at Cambridge for barracks, and melting its organ- 
pipes into bullets. 

Thus confronted, both armies seemed alike confident 
of success, and anxious for a trial. The British were 
naturally mortified at their condition as besieged. They 
looked with anxiety to the heights of Charlestown and 
Dorchester, and were forming measures to occupy them, 
having decided to put them in force on the 18th of June. 
They regarded their opponents as rude, untaught, and 
cowardly farmers, and were nettled at being kept at bay 
by an army clothed in calico frocks and carrying fowling 
pieces. 

The provincials did not feel their lack of discipline as 
they should have done. They were restless under re- 
straint, they were used to skirmishes and thought such 
would be the contest before them. Yet in the Council of 
War, and in the Committee of Safety, there was a differ- 
ence of opinion as to the measures to be pursued. If the 
heights of Charlestown were once occupied by the pro- 
vincials, they must be retained against a constant fire, 
which could not be answered, as there were but eleven 
barrels of powder in the camp, and these contained one 
sixth of all that there was in the province. General 
Ward, and Joseph Warren, who was Chairman of the 
Committee of Safety, and had been elected Major General 
on the 14th of June, were doubtful as to the expediency 
of intrenching on Bunker's Hill. General Putnam was 
earnest in advocating the measure, saying, " the Ameri- 
cans are not at all afraid of their heads, though very 
much afraid of their legs ; if you cover these, they will 
fight forever." Pomeroy coincided with Putnam ; he was 
willing to attack the enemy with five cartridges to a man, 
for he had been accustomed in hunting, with three 
charges of powder, to bring home two or three deer. 
Daring enterprise prevailed in the Council, and it was 
resolved that the heights of Charlestown, which had 



27 

been reconnoitred the month before by Colonels Gridley 
and Henshaw, and Mr. Devens, should be fortified. On 
the 15th of June, the Committee of Safety, by a secret 
vote, which was not recorded till the 19th, advised the 
taking possession of Bunker's Hill, and of Dorchester 
heights. On the next day the Provincial Congress, as a 
counterblast to General Gage's proclamation, by which 
Hancock and Adams had been excepted from the protfer 
of a general amnesty, issued a like instrument, in which 
General Gage and Admiral Graves were the scape-goats. 

It was amid the full splendor, luxuriance, and heat of 
our summer, when rich crops were waving upon all the 
hills and vallies around us, that the Council of War de- 
cided to carry into execution the vote of the Committee 
of Safety. We may omit the question as to the pru- 
dence or discretion of the measure, as being equally diffi- 
cult of decision and unimportant, save as the misgivings 
of those who predicted that the deficiency of ammunition 
would endanger a failure, were proved by the result to be 
well grounded. 

On Friday, June 16th, the very day upon which Wash- 
ington was officially informed, in the Congress at Phila- 
delphia, of his appointment to the command of the conti- 
nental army about to be enlisted, General Ward issued 
orders to Colonels Prescott and Bridge, and the Com- 
mandant of Colonel Frye's regiment, to have their men 
ready and prepared for immediate service. They were 
all yeomen from Middlesex and Essex counties, and were 
habituated to the hard labors of a farm beneath a sum- 
mer's sun. Captain Gridley's new company of artillery, 
and 120 men from the Connecticut regiment, under the 
command of Captain Knowlton, were included in the 
order. 

Twenty-three years ago a controversy arose concerning 
the command of this expedition. Who was its com- 
mander, rightfully or actually? This question, which 
became most unfortunately mingled with party politics, 



28 



was most earnestly and passionately discussed. The 
only decisive evidence which both parties would have 
admitted to be satisfactory, would consist in the produc- 
tion of the order which came from General Ward ; this, 
however, is not in existence. Judge Advocate Tudor, 
who presided at the court-martials instituted by General 
Washington on his arrival at Cambridge, said that Col. 
Prescott appeared to have been the chief. The contra- 
dictory and discordant statements of those who, having 
been engaged in the field at different places and at different 
hours, were called upon during the controversy to make 
depositions as to who was the commander in chief, are 
to be accounted for by the lapse of time and the effects 
of age ; and besides, great allowances are to be made on 
account of the confusion in the army, and the hurried and 
unsystematic character of the expedition. He who led 
the detachment and fulfilled the order, probably received 
the order. The order was to intrench and to defend the 
intrenchments ; — this order was fulfilled by night and by 
day, by the body of men whom Prescott led from Cam- 
bridge to Charlestown, and by the reinforcements who 
joined them. There is no evidence that Prescott received 
any order from any other officer besides General Ward. 
At any rate, he understood till the day of his death, that 
he had the command of the expedition. A fair and im- 
partial detail of the action, if so be we are able to present 
it, will be sufficient to satisfy the simple desire for the 
simple truth. 

Col. Gridley accompanied as chief engineer. Three 
companies of Bridge's regiment did not go, but as small 
parties of other regiments fell into the detachment, it con- 
sisted of about 1,000 men. They took with them provi- 
sions for one meal. Colonel Prescott was ordered to take 
possession of, to fortify and to defend. Bunker's Hill, but 
to keep the purpose of the expedition secret, nor was it 
known to the men, until they found the wagons on 
Charlestown neck, laden with the intrenching tools. The 



29 

detachment was drawn up upon Cambridge Common, in 
front of General Ward's head-quarters, after sunset, when 
prayers were offered by the Rev. Pres. Langdon, and 
about nine o'clock the expedition was in motion — Pres- 
cott, with two sergeants carrying dark-lanterns open in 
the rear, leading the way. Though Prescott has fre- 
quently been represented in accounts of the battle as 
dressed in the working garb of a farmer, and appears in 
Trumbull's painting, as wearing a slouched hat, and 
bearing a musket, he was in reality arrayed in a simple 
and appropriate military costume, a three-cornered hat, 
a blue coat, with a single row of buttons, lapped up and 
faced, and he wore his well-proved sword. This state- 
ment may be thought a trivial correction, but it some- 
times happens that important facts depend upon small 
particulars. As he was sensible to the effects of the heat, 
and expected warm service, he took with him a linen 
coat, or banyan, which he wore in the engagement. 

The order designated Bunker's Hill as the position to 
be taken. But by mounting it we can ourselves see that, 
commanded as it might be by shipping in the rivers, and 
by defences upon Breed's Hill, it would have been alto- 
gether untenable, except in connection with the latter 
summit, while for all purposes of restraining and annoy- 
ing the enemy in Boston, Breed's Hill was far superior. 
Much time, however, was consumed in deliberation, after 
the detachment had crossed the neck, and it was only 
after the repeated and urgent warnings of the engineer, 
that longer delay would nullify all their labors, that the 
works were commenced upon Breed's Hill about mid- 
night. In the account of the engagement afterwards 
prepared by the Massachusetts Congress, it is said that 
Breed's Hill was fortified by mistake. The reason for 
this statement is not apparent. Undoubtedly, if both 
summits had been fortified, and defended by troops well 
provided with ammunition, the provincials would have 
maintained their ground, but they could not have pre- 



30 

vented the design of the British in occupying the heights 
without securing Breed's Hill, As the summits are not 
within musket-shot, and as the British would certainly 
have occupied Breed's Hill, if not first taken hy the pro- 
vincials, our scanty ammunition and weak artillery 
would have been of but little avail. 

The relative features of the two summits have not as 
yet been essentially changed, their highest points being 
about 130 rods apart, and Bunker's Hill lying a few rods 
north of a line drawn westward from Breed's Hill, which 
is directly opposite, at a distance of less than a mile from 
Copp's Hill in Boston. Then, as now, a straight road, 
beginning at the narrowest point of Charlestown neck, 
ascended and crossed the summit of Bunker's Hill, at an 
elevation of 112 feet, descended to the little valley, and 
there joined a road which completely encircled the base 
of Breed's Hill, which rises about 62 feet. One ascend- 
ing road, answering to Wood street, united this encircling 
road with oar present Main street. Back of the two 
summits the land sloped, with occasional irregularities, 
down to the Mystic shore. A point of land bearing east 
from Breed's Hill, and extending towards the bay, is 
called Morton's Point, and swells into a summit 35 feet 
high, called Morton's Hill. Between Breed's Hill and 
Morton's Point, much of the ground was sloughy, and 
occupied by several brick-kilns. Breed's Hill was then 
chiefly used by householders in Charlestown for pasturage, 
and was intersected by many fences. Towards Morton's 
Point some patches were then covered with tall waving 
grass, ripe for the scythe, while farther back, on the mar- 
gin of Mystic river, at the base of the two summits, were 
fine crops of hay, just mown, lying upon the eve of the 
battle in winrows and cocks. The fences and tall un- 
mown grass, which were of great advantage to the Amer- 
icans in their stationary defences, were grievous impedi- 
ments and annoyances to the British in their advances. 
There were then two or three houses and barns only 



31 

upon this south-western slope of Breed's Hill. The edi- 
fices of the town were gathered around the present 
square, and extended along the main street to the neck. 

The monument now occupies the centre of the redoubt, 
which was eight rods square ; the southern side, running 
parallel with the main street, was constructed with one 
projecting and two entering angles. On a line with the 
eastern side, which faced the navy yard, was a breast- 
work of nearly 400 feet in length, running down the hill 
towards the Mystic ; the sally-port opened upon the in- 
terval between the redoubt and the breastwork, and was 
defended by a blind. Colonel Gridley planned the works, 
which exhibited an equal measure of military science and 
of yankee ingenuity. No vestige of the redoubt now re- 
mains, but a portion of the breastwork is distinctly visi- 
ble. The intrenchments which we now see lying west of 
the monument, are remains of the fortifications made by 
the British, after the battle. 

It has been asserted by two or three persons, and con- 
tradicted by others, who were together working by night 
upon the intrenchments, that General Putnam was there, 
directing, encouraging and aiding. If he was there, his 
presence must have been cheering and animating to those 
of the men who knew his person and history. As we 
have no certainty that he was then in the works, of 
course we cannot decide whether he had any part in their 
construction. He may have rode over the neck with or 
after the detachment, and he would have been a most 
welcome counsellor. As Putnam was met the next fore- 
noon, coming from Cambridge to Charlestown, by Major 
Brooks, who was sent to General Ward with a message 
from Colonel Prescott, he must have left the redoubt, if 
he had been in it at all, in the course of the night, or very 
early in the morning. 

But though the hands which spaded the bulwarks of 
earth upon that summit on the night of Friday, June 
16th, were used to daily toil, and brought to their 



32 



unwonted midnight task the most unflinching courage 
and determination, it was still a work of dreadful anxiety. 
It was a bright starlight night of mid-summer, when the 
long hours of day almost deny an interval to the dark- 
ness, and we expect each moment after twilight in the 
west, to behold the grey of morning in the east. A guard 
was stationed at the shore nearest Boston, to anticipate 
any movement of the enemy. Prescott himself stood 
there in company with our late Governor Brooks, then a 
major in Bridge's regiment, and heard from the sentries 
relieving guard, the cry, "all's well." After a while 
Prescott, thinking it impossible that the enemy could be 
so hard of hearing, went down to the shore again, and 
finding all secure, he recalled the guard. The work 
went on, and burdened moments secured the results of 
hours. There was a scene for the imagination to picture, 
but we may not now delineate it. Even the narrow 
space occupied by the river's bed, was wider than the 
distance between those midnight laborers and their ene- 
mies. Five armed vessels then floated in the middle of 
the stream ; the Glasgow, on the line of Cragie's Bridge, 
with 24 guns and 130 men, commanded the summit of 
Bunker's Hill and the neck by which this peninsula com- 
municates with Medford and Cambridge ; the Somerset, 
with 68 guns and 520 men, lying near the draw of our 
present old bridge, commanded Charlestown square and 
its dwelling houses ; the Lively, with 20 guns and 130 
men, lying off the navy yard, could throw its shot 
directly upon the redoubt ; and the Falcon, sloop of war, 
lying off" Morton's Point, defended the ascent between the 
landing places of the British and Breed's Hill ; and the 
Cerberus, of 36 guns, maintained a continual fire during the 
attack. These ships were most advantageously situated 
for the purposes of the enemy, and it seems almost impos- 
sible that the sentries could have been wakeful at their 
posts, and not have heard the operations upon the hill. 
The four hours of darkness after the labors of intrench- 



33 

ment commenced, at last gave place to the beams of early- 
morning. On that moment when the snn sent forth the 
first heralds of his coming, seems to have been suspended 
the fate of empires. How awfully in contrast with the 
glorious goodness of the Almighty, in pouring out over 
the darkened sky and the dew-sprinkled earth, the burst- 
ing radiance of the sun, was to be the scene which the 
sun would behold upon that green eminence. How 
dreadful was the sin of deforming that fair scene, when 
the heavens in their glory greeted the earth in its loveli- 
ness — how dreadful was the sin of deforming such a scene 
with the frantic passions of war. If true patriotism, if 
wise policy, at least if the love which Christian people of 
the same blood and lineage should bear to each other, 
had been allowed its full, free influence over the parties 
in the approaching struggle, how much agony and woe, 
and fruitless wretchedness might have been averted! 
Even then it was not too late for justice, justice on the 
part of our proud and unfeeling oppressors, to have en- 
sured peace. The blood shed at Concord and Lexington, 
with the long list of antecedent outrages, might have 
been forgiven by our fathers. They had not been the 
aggressors ; they acted only on the defensive ; they struck 
a blow only to ward off a blow. There is no evidence 
that the heights of Charlestown were occupied for any 
other purpose than that of defence, to confine the enemy 
within their narrow quarters, and to prevent any more 
hostile incursions into the country. When the morning 
sun displayed to the astonished invaders the character of 
the last night's labor, and showed them the workmen 
still employed, with undismayed hearts and untired 
hands, it was not even then too late for peace. Gage and 
his officers, at least, if their hired subordinates did not, 
should have honored, though they might not have feared 
that patriot band ; should have respected the spirit which 
controlled them, and should have counted the cost of the 
bloody issue. But not one moment, not one word, 
5 



34 

perhaps not one thought, was spent upon intercession or 
warning. 

The instant that the first beams of light marked dis- 
tinctly the outlines of the Americans, and of their in- 
trenchments upon the hill, the cannon of the Lively, 
which floated nearest, opened a hot fire upon them, at 
the same time arousing the sleepers in Boston, to come 
forth as spectators or actors in the cruel tragedy. The 
other armed vessels, some floating batteries, and the bat- 
tery on Copp's Hill, combined to pour forth their vollies, 
uttering a startling and dismal note of preparation for the 
day's conflict. But the works, though not completed, 
were in a state of such forwardness that the missiles of 
destruction fell harmless, and the intrenchers continued 
to strengthen their position. The enemy in Boston could 
scarcely credit their eyesight. Prescott, the hero of the 
day, with whom its proudest fame should rest, was un- 
daunted, ardent, and full of heroic energy. He planned 
and directed, he encouraged the men, he mounted the 
works, and with his bald head uncovered, and his com- 
manding frame, he was a noble personification of a patriot 
cause. Some of the men incautiously ventured in front 
of the works, when one of them was instantly killed by a 
cannon shot. This first victim was buried in the ditch, 
and his companions were fearfully warned of the fatali- 
ties which the day would bring yet nearer to them. 

When the orders had been issued at Cambridge, the 
night before, to those who had thus complied with them, 
refreshments and reinforcements had been promised in 
the morning. Thus some of the men might have thought 
they had fulfilled their part of the work, and were enti- 
tled to relief, or were at liberty to depart. Some few, 
when the first victim fell, left the hill, and did not return. 
Those who remained were exhausted with their toil, and 
without food or water, and the morning was already in- 
tensely hot. The officers, sympathising with their situa- 
tion and sufferings, requested Prescott to send to Cam- 



35 

bridge for relief. He summoned a council of war, but 
was resolute against the petition, saying that the enemy 
would not venture an attack, and if they did venture, 
would be defeated ; that the men. who had raised the 
works were best able to defend them, and deserved the 
honor of the victory ; that they had already learned to 
despise the tire of the. enemy. The vehemence of Pres- 
cott infused new spirit into the men, and they resolved to 
stand the dread issue. Prescott ordered a guard to the 
ferry to prevent a landing there. He was seen by Gage, 
who was reconnoitring from Copp's Hill, and who in- 
quired of Counsellor Willard, by his side, " Who is that 
officer commanding 7" Willard recognised his brother-in- 
law, and named Colonel Prescott. "Will he fight?" 
asked Gage. The answer was, " Yes, sir, depend upon 
it, to the last drop of blood in him ; but I cannot answer 
for his men." Yet Prescott could answer for his men, 
and that amounted to the same thing. 

The measures of the enemy were undoubtedly delayed 
by sheer amazement and surprise, on finding that the in- 
trepidity' of the provincials had anticipated them in an 
enterprise upon which they had deliberately decided. In 
the Council of War, called by Gage, all were unanimous 
that the enemy must be dislodged, but there was a differ- 
ence of opinion as to the manner of effecting this object. 
The majority agreed with Generals Clinton and Grant, 
in advising that the British troops should be embarked at 
the bottom of the Common, in boats, and under the pro- 
tection of the ships and floating batteries, should land at 
Charlestown, and thus hold the provincials and their in- 
trenchments at their mercy. But General Gage overruled 
the advice, and determined upon landing and making an 
attack in front of the works, fearing that his troops, if 
landed at the neck, would be ruinously surrounded by 
the intrenchers, and the whole army at Cambridge. 

Meanwhile General Ward, though repeatedly solicited 
by Putnam and by messengers sent from Prescott, hesi- 



36 

tated about weakening the strength of the main army by- 
sending reinforcements upon the hill, for as the enemy- 
had not yet landed, he had good reason to fear that they 
might divide their forces, and while engaging with the 
intrenchers, effect a landing at some other spot, and pro- 
ceed to Watertown or Cambridge, where the scanty stores 
of the provincials were deposited. 

By nine o'clock the preparations in Boston, heard and 
seen by Prescott on the hill, informed him of the determi- 
nation of the British to attack. He therefore gave up his 
first opinion, that they would not dare to resist him, and 
comforted himself and his men with the promise of cer- 
tain and glorious victory. He sent Major Brooks to Gen. 
Ward, to urge the necessity of his being reinforced. 
Brooks being obliged to proceed on foot, as Capt. Gridley 
would not risk one of his artillery horses to pass the 
neck, which was swept by the Glasgow frigate, arrived 
about ten o'clock at head-quarters, where the Committee 
of Safety were then in session. Brooks's urgency, second- 
ed by the solicitations of Richard Devens, a member of 
the committee, and a citizen of Charlestown, induced 
General Ward to order that Colonels Reed and Stark, 
then at Medford, should reinforce Prescott with the New 
Hampshire troops. The companies at Chelsea were then 
recalled, and the order reached Medford at 11 o'clock. 
The men were as speedily as possible provided with am- 
munition, though much time was consumed in the prep- 
aration. Each man received two flints, a gill of powder, 
and fifteen balls. They were without cartridge-boxes, 
and used powder-horns and pouches, or their pockets, as 
substitutes, and in making up their cartridges they were 
obliged to beat and shape their balls according to the dif- 
ferent calibre of their guns. 

Dr. Joseph Warren, one of the most distinguished and 
self-sacrificing of the many patriots of the time, had not 
yet taken the commission which was granted to him on 
the 14th of June. He had twice maintained the cause 



37 

of liberty in the very teeth of British officers, on the 
annual commemoration of the 5th of March. When the 
report of the coming action reached him at Watertown, 
where he then was, as acting President of the Provincial 
Congress and Chairman of the Committee of Safety, 
though suffering from illness and exhaustion, he resolved 
to join in the strife. Wholly inexperienced as he was in 
military tactics, his determination could not be shaken 
by the earnest remonstrances of his friends. His pres- 
ence and counsel were needed in the committee, but he 
persisted in his resolve, and we must lament, as all his 
contemporaries lamented, that his heroism outran his 
prudence, and would not be controlled by duty in another 
direction. 

The hostile arrangements of the British being con- 
cluded, our devoted band upon the slightly fortified hill, 
soon saw the result. At noon, twenty-eight barges, form- 
ed in two parallel lines, left the end of Long Wharf, and 
made for Morton's Point, the most feasible landing-place. 
The barges were crowded with British troops of the 5th, 
38th, 43d and 52d battalions of infantry, two companies 
of grenadiers, and ten of light infantry. These troops 
were all splendidly appointed, with glittering firelocks 
and bayonets, but sadly encumbered, for the hot work 
before them and the hot sun above them, by their arms 
and ammunition ; and it would seem by the statement of 
their own historian, Stedman, that they carried a hundred 
pounds of provision, intended to last for three days. 
Their regular and uniform appearance, with six pieces of 
ordnance shining in the bows of the leading barges, pre- 
sented an imposing and alarming spectacle to our raw 
soldiery. Some of the regulars that had lately arrived, 
had been retained on board of the transports, on account 
of the crowded state of Boston. Some of these were 
landed for the first time at Charlestown, and thus the 
first spot of American soil upon which many of them 
trod, became to them a grave. The officers were all men 



38 

of experience and valor : Generals Howe and Pigot, Cols. 
Nesbit, Abercrombie, and Clarke, Majors Butler, Wil- 
liams, Bruce, Spendlove, Smelt, Mitchell, Pitcairn, Short, 
Small, and Lord Raw don, were the most distinguished. 
Captain Addison, allied to the author of the Spectator, 
had arrived in Boston on the day before the battle, and 
had then accepted an invitation to dine with General 
Burgoyne on the 17th, when a far diiferent experience 
awaited him, for he was numbered among the slain. 

This detachment landed at Morton's Point about one 
o'clock, defended by the shipping, and wholly unmolest- 
ed. They soon discovered an egregious and provoking 
act of carelessness on the part of their master of ordnance, 
in sending over cannon-balls too large for their pieces. 
They were immediately returned to Boston, and were not 
replaced in season for the first action. At the same time 
General Howe, the commander of the detachment, re- 
quested of General Gage a reinforcement, which he 
thought to be necessary the moment that he had a fair 
view of the elevated and formidable position of the pro- 
vincials, as seen from the point. 

While these messages were passing, some of the British 
troops stretched at their ease upon the grass, ate in peace 
their last meal, refreshing their thirst from large tubs of 
drink — a tantalizing sight to the provincials. About two 
o'clock the reinforcement landed at Madlin's ship-yard, 
now the navy yard. It consisted of the 47th battalion of 
infantry, a battalion of marines, and some more com- 
panies of grenadiers and light infantry. The whole 
number of British troops who engaged in the course of 
the action did not fall short of, and probably exceeded, 
5,000. In connection with this force, which far surpass- 
ed that of the provincials in numbers, and was immeasur- 
ably superior to them in discipline and military appoint- 
ments, we are to consider the marines in the ships, which 
completely cannonaded three sides of the hill, and the 
six-gun battery on Copp's Hill, as engaging in the 



39 



unequal contest. Contrasting a British regular with a 
provincial soldier, we are accustomed to ascribe immense 
advantages of discipline to the former. Yet we are to 
remember that an overpowering superiority of character 
and of cause was on the side of the latter. If we could 
have followed a recruiting sergeant of Great Britain at 
that time, as he hunted out from dram-shops and the 
haunts of idleness and vice, the low and vulgar inebriate, 
the lawless and dissolute spendthrift, seeing how well the 
sergeant knew where to look for his recruits, we should 
know how much discipline could do for them, and how 
much it must leave undone. The provincials were not 
acquainted with the forms and terms of military tactics ; 
but they knew the difference between half-cock and 
double-cock, and the more they hated the vermin which 
they had been used to hunt with their fowling-pieces, the 
straighter did the bullet speed from the muzzle. But 
their superiority consisted in the kind of pay which they 
were to receive, not in pounds and shillings, but in a free 
land, a happy home, and rulers of their own choice. 

While the British troops were forming their lines, a 
slight work was constructed by the Connecticut troops, 
sent from the redoubt, under Captain Knowlton, which 
proved of essential service to the provincials. A rail 
fence, under a small part of which a stone wall was 
piled to the height of about two feet, ran from the road 
which crossed the tongue of land between the hills, to the 
bank of the Mystic, with a few apple trees on each side of it. 
The provincials pulled up some other fences near by, and 
set them in a line parallel with this, filling the space be- 
tween with the fresh mown hay around the ground. 
The length of this slight defence was about 700 feet. It 
was about 600 feet in rear of the redoubt and breastwork, 
and had it been on a line with them, would have left a 
space of about 100 feet between the end of the earthen 
and the wooden defences. Thus there was an opening 
of about 700 feet on the slope of the hill between the 



40 

intrenchments and the rail fence, which the provincials 
had not time to secure. Part of this intervening space 
then, as now, was sloughy, and as there were no means 
of defending it save a few scattered trees, the troops be- 
hind the breastwork were exposed to a galling fire from 
the enemy, on their third attack, which finally brought 
about the unfavorable issue of the strife. The six pieces 
of British artillery were stationed at first upon Morton's 
Hill. 

All these preparations, visible as they were to thous- 
ands upon the neighboring hill-tops, steeples and house- 
roofs, were watched with the in tensest anxiety. Un- 
doubtedly, the common persuasion and fear was that 
General Gage would himself lead a portion, if not 
the whole of the residue of his army, upon an attack 
at some other point in the semi-circle. Roxbury 
was heavily cannonaded, to retain the forces there from 
proceeding to Charlestown. A schooner, with 500 or 600 
men, was directed to the Cambridge shore, but wind and 
tide proved unfavorable. In fear of these movements 
great caution was advisable in sending reinforcements 
upon the hill. Captain Callender was ordered there with 
his artillery. Gardner's, Patterson's and Doolittle's regi- 
ments were stationed at different points between Charles- 
town neck and Cambridge. This neck, though frequently 
passed by our officers and troops in single file, was fear- 
fully hazardous during the whole day, as it was raked 
by a fire of round, bar, and chain shot, from the Glas- 
gow, and from two armed gondolas near the shore. The 
reinforcements arrived from Medford before the engage- 
ment, though General Stark had led them very moder- 
ately, insisting that " one fresh man in battle is worth 
ten fatigued ones." General Putnam stopped a part of 
them to unite Avith a detachment from the redoubt in at- 
tempting to fortify Bunker's Hill, which was of great 
consequence to the provincials in case of a retreat. Stark 
with oaths and encouragements led on the remainder to 
the rail fence. 



41 

It soon became a matter of importance to the provin- 
cials to seek the utmost possible help from their artillery, 
but it amounted to very little. A few ineffectual shot had 
been fired from Gridley's pieces in the redoubt, against 
Copp's Hill and the shipping, when the pieces were re- 
moved and placed with Captain Callender's at the space 
between the fence and the breastwork. Here they would 
have been of some service in defending our weakest and 
most exposed point. But the officers and the companies 
who had them in charge were wholly ignorant of their 
management, and on the plea of having unsuitable car- 
tridges, Callender was drawing his guns off' to prepare 
ammunition, when Putnam urged him to return. The 
pieces were fired a few times, and soon afterwards were 
moved by Captain Ford to the rail fence. 

General Pomeroy, at Cambridge, old as he was, was 
moved like the war-horse at the smell of the battle. He 
begged a horse of General Ward that he might ride to 
Charlestown, but on reaching the neck, and observing 
the hot fire which raked it, he was afraid to risk the bor- 
rowed animal. Giving him then in charge to a sentry, 
he walked on to the rail fence, where his well-known 
form and countenance called forth enthusiastic shouts. 
Colonel Little came up with his regiment, and the men 
were stationed along the line, from the rail fence on the 
left to a cart- way. There were also reinforcements of 
about 300 troops each, from Brewer's, Nixon's, Wood- 
bridge's and Doolittle's regiments, detachments of which 
were stationed along the main street in Charlestown. 
Colonel Scammans, who was deprived of his sense and 
his courage, either by confusion or fear, had been ordered 
by General Ward to go where the fighting was. He went 
to Lechmere's Point, understanding, as he said, that the 
enemy were landing there. He was advised to go to the 
hill. He chose to understand the nearest hill, and so he 
posted himself upon Cobble Hill, where the Insane Hospi- 
tal now stands, and occupied that useless position. Gen. 
6 



42 

Warren arrived just before the action. Putnam endeav- 
ored to dissuade him from entering it, and then recom- 
mended to him a safe place, and offered to receive his 
orders. But Warren could not be thus wrought upon. 
He said he came only as a vohmteer, and instead of seek- 
ing a place of safety, wished to know where the onset 
would be most furious. Putnam pointed to the redoubt 
as the place of danger and importance. Prescott there 
offered to receive Warren's orders, but he again said he 
Avas happy to serve as a volunteer. 

The tune of Yankee Doodle, which afforded the British 
so much sport as ridiculing the provincials, was the tune 
by which our fathers were led on to that contest. Let 
their example commend to us this only way of depriving 
ridicule of its sting, for there is nothing which it so much 
annoys men to spend in vain as their scorn. 

Before the engagement commenced. Captain Walker, of 
Chelmsford, led a band of about fifty resolute men down 
into Charlestown to annoy the enemy's left flank. They 
did great execution and then abandoned their dangerous 
position, to attack the right flank upon Mystic river. 
Here the captain was wounded and taken prisoner. He 
died of his wounds in Boston jail. 

The British, in their attack, aimed at two distinct ob- 
jects ; first, to force and carry the redoubt ; second, to 
turn the left flank of our troops, and thus to cut off their 
retreat. To accomplish the former. General Pigot, who 
commanded the British left wing, displayed under cover 
of the eastern slope of the hill, and advanced against the 
redoubt and breastwork. General Howe led the right 
wing, which advanced along the shore of the Mystic to 
the rail fence. The artillery prepared the way for the 
infantry, and it was at this time that the mistake of the 
oversized balls was a great grievance to the enemy, as 
they had but a few rounds of proper shot. 

It was of vital necessity that every charge of powder 
and ball spent by the Americans should take effect. 



43 

There was none for waste. The officers commanded 
their men to withhold their fire till the enemy were within 
eight rods, and when they could see the whites of their 
eyes, to aim at their waistbands, also to "aim at the 
handsome coats, and pick off the commanders." As the 
British left wing came within gun-shot, the men in the 
redoubt could scarcely restrain their fire, and a few dis- 
charged their pieces. Prescott, indignant at this disobe- 
dience, vowed instant death to any one who should repeat 
it, and promised by the confidence which they reposed in 
him to give the command at the proper moment. His 
Lieutenant Colonel, Robinson^ ran round the top of the 
works and knocked up the muskets. When the space 
between the assailants and the redoubt was narrowed 
to the appointed span, the word was spoken at the mo- 
ment ; the deadly flashes burst forth, and the green grass 
was crimsoned with the life-blood of hundreds. The 
front rank was nearly obliterated, as were its successive 
substitutes, as the Americans were well protected, and 
were deliberate in their aim. The enemy fell like the tall 
grass which grew around before the practised sweep of 
the mower. General Pigot was obliged to give the word 
for a retreat. Some of the wounded were seen crawling 
with the last energies of life from the gory heap of the 
dying and the dead, among whom the officers, by their 
proportion, far outnumbered the private soldiers. As the 
wind rolled away the suffocating smoke, and the blasts 
of the artillery and the musketry for a moment ceased, 
the awful spectacle, the agonising yells and shrieks of the 
sufferers were distracting and piercing. Prayers and 
groans, foul impious oaths, and fond invocations of the 
loved and the dear, were mingled into sounds which 
scarcely seemed of human utterance, by the rapturous 
shout of victory which rang from the redoubt. The 
earth has not a sight or sound more maddening, in its 
passion or its woe, than a battle-field. Hell then gushes 
forth from the fiery bowels of the earth, and covers its 
fair surface with the flames and yells of demon strife. 



44 

While such was the temporary aspect of the field near 
the redoubt, General Howe, with the right wing, made 
for the rail fence, where Putnam, assisted by Captain 
Ford's company, had posted the artillery with success. 
Here, as at the redoubt, some of the provincials were 
tempted to discharge their muskets while the advancing 
enemy were destroying a fence which crossed their path. 
Putnam, with an oath, threatened to cut down with his 
sword the next offender. The word was given when the 
enemy were within eight rods. The artillery had already 
made a lane through the column, and now the fowling- 
pieces mowed down their victims, especially the officers, 
with fearful celerity. The strong lungs of Major Mc- 
Clary raised the voice of encouragement above the roar 
of the cannon. The assailants were compelled to retreat, 
leaving behind them heaps of the fallen, while some of the 
flying even hurried to their boats. Their artillery had 
stopped in the slough among the brick-kilns, and could 
do but little. The regulars did not take aim, and their 
shot passed high over the heads of the Americans. The 
trees around were afterwards observed with their trunks 
unscathed, while their branches were riddled through and 
through. The passionate shout of victory again rang 
through the American lines, and even the coward was 
nerved to daring. 

Now it was that our troops and our cause suffered from 
the want of discipline, and from the confusion apparent 
in the whole management of the action, originating in the 
hasty and imperfect preparation, and in their ignorance 
of the purposes of the enemy. The neck of land ploughed 
by the engines of death, and clouded by the dust thus 
raised, was an almost insuperable obstacle to the bringing 
on of reinforcements. Major Gridley, wholly unfitted in 
spirit and in skill, had been put in command of a battal- 
ion of infantry, in compliment to his father. He lost, 
and could not recover, his self-possession and courage. 
Though ordered to the hill, he advanced towards Charles- 



45 

town slowly and fearfully, and though urged by Colonel 
Frye to hasten, he was satisfied with the poor service of 
firing three-pounders from Cobble Hill upon the Glas- 
gow. His Captain Trevett refused obedience to such 
weakness, and ordered his men to follow him to the 
works. Colonel Gerrish, with his artillery on Bunker's 
Hill, could neither be urged nor intimidated by Putnam 
to bring his pieces to the rail fence. He was unwieldy 
with corpulence, and overcome with heat and fatigue. 
His men had been scattered from the summit of the hill, 
which took tremendous effect here, as it was thought to 
be strongly fortified. 

The enemy rallied for a second attack. Though they 
had sorely suffered, and some few of the officers were 
reluctant to renew the fatal effort, yet the large body, like 
the general, would have yielded to death in any form of 
horror, before they would have left the field to those whom 
they had always represented as cowards. At this crisis 
four hundred reinforcements came over from Boston to 
repair the British loss, and Dr. Jeffries accompanied them 
as surgeon. The regulars again steadily advanced, and 
with the dreadful apathy of feeling induced by a battle- 
field, they even piled up the bodies of their slaughtered 
comrades as a breastwork for their own protection. The 
artillery was now drawn up by the road which divided 
the tongue of land on the Mystic from the hill, to within 
nine hundred feet of the rail fence. The object was to 
bring it on a line with the redoubt, and to open a way for 
the infantry. It was daring this second attack that 
Charlestown was set on fire. Probably a double purpose 
was intended by this act : first that the smoke might 
cover the advance of the enemy, and second to dislodge 
some of the provincials, who from the shelter of the 
houses had annoyed the British left wing. General Howe 
sent over the order to Burgoyne and Clinton to' fire the 
town, and the order was fulfilled by carcasses thrown 
from Copp's Hill, which, aided by some marines who 



46 

landed from the Somerset, completed the work of desola- 
tion. 

The Americans were prepared for the renewed attack. 
They had orders to reserve their fire till the enemy were 
within six rods, and then to take deadly aim. As before, 
the shot of the enemy was mostly ineffectual, ranging far 
above the heads of the provincials. Still some of the pri- 
vates fell, and Colonels Brewer, Nixon and Buckminster, 
and Major Moore were wounded, the latter mortally, cry- 
ing out in his death-thirst for water, which coald not be 
obtained nearer than the neck, whither two of his men 
went to seek it. The British stood, for a time whose mo- 
ments were hours, the deadly discharge which was poured 
upon them as they passed the appointed line, while whole 
ranks of officers and men fell in heaps. General Howe 
stood in the thickest of the fight, wrought up to a desper- 
ate determination. For a time he was almost alone, his 
aid-de-camps, and many other officers of his staff, lying 
wounded or dead. But though he would not lead a sec- 
ond retreat, he was compelled to follow it, and to hear 
the repeated shout of victory rise from the patriot band 
who had weighed the choice between death and slavery. 
Thus the British were twice fairly and completely driven 
from the hill. For success, up to this moment^ the pro- 
vincials have not had the deserved acknowledgment in 
the English histories. Even Burke (if, as is probable, he 
wrote the account in the Annual Register,) refers only 
once to the repulse, and then merely says the regulars 
"were thrown into some disorder." 

But now the fortunes of the day were to be reversed, so 
far, and so far only, as to attach the bare name of victory 
to the side of the foreign assailants. The provincials en- 
couraged themselves with the hope that the two repulses 
which had compelled the regulars to retire with such stu- 
pendous' loss, would deter them from a renewed attack. 
Some of the British officers did indeed remonstrate against 
leading the men to another butchery, but their remon- 



47 

strance was disdainfully repelled by their comrades. 
During the second attack, a provincial, with incautious 
loudness of speech, had declared that the ammunition was 
exhausted, and he was overheard by some of the regulars. 
General Clinton, who from Copp's Hill had witnessed the 
repeated repulse of his Majesty's troops with great morti- 
fication, took a boat and passed over as a volunteer, 
bringing with him added reinforcements. A new mode 
of attack was now determined upon. General Howe 
having discovered that weak point, the space between 
the breastwork and the rail fence, now led the left wing, 
and resolved to apply the main strength of the assault 
against the redoubt and the breastwork, particularly to 
rake the latter with the artillery from the left, while he 
disguised this purpose by a feigned show of force at the 
rail fence. The men now divested themselves of their 
heavy knapsacks, some of them even of their coats. 
They were ordered to stand the fire of the provincials, 
and then to make a resolute charge at the point of the 
bayonet. The three facts last mentioned, viz. the knowl- 
edge of the enemy that the provincials lacked ammuni- 
tion, the encouragement of the presence of Gen. Clinton, 
and the discovery of the weak point in the works, may 
have nerved the British to undertake a third attack. 

While these hostile preparations were in progress, the 
little band of devoted patriots, exhausted almost to com- 
plete prostration by their long and unrefreshed toil of the 
night, and by the bloody work of noon-day, had time to 
summon their remaining energies, to resolve that the last 
blow should be the heaviest, to think upon the glory of 
their cause and the laurels they should forever wear. 
The few remaining cartridges were distributed by Pres- 
cott. The small number of men whose muskets were 
furnished with bayonets, stood ready to repel the charge ; 
and those who were without this defence, as well as with- 
out ammunition, resolved to club their muskets and wield 
their heavy stocks, while the ferocity of despair strung 



48 

every nerve. Even the loose stones of the intrenchments 
were gladly secured as the last stay of an unflinching 
resolution. 

A body of reinforcements, fresh and resolute, and pro- 
vided with bayonets, might have forced the regulars to a 
third and final retreat, but as before remarked, unavoida- 
ble confusion prevailed in the American camp. The neck 
of land, the only line of communication, wore a terrible 
aspect to raw recruits, and General Ward was without 
staff officers to convey his orders. The regiments which 
had been stationed along the road to wait further com- 
mands, were overlooked. Colonel Gardner, though thus 
left without orders, panting to join the strife, led 300 men 
to Bunker's Hill, where Putnam first set them upon in- 
trenching, but soon urged them to action at the lines. 
The Colonel commanded his men to drop their tools and 
follow. He was leading them to the post of dangerous 
service, when he received a mortal wound by a musket- 
ball in the groin. As he was borne off the field, he com- 
manded his men to conquer or die ; deprived of their offi- 
cer, but few of them engaged in the action. His son, a 
youth of nineteen, met him on his way, and overcome with 
grief, sought to aid him, but the father commanded him 
to march to his duty. Colonel Scammans remained on 
Cobble Hill, but a detachment of Gerrish's regiment, 
under their Danish adjutant Ferbiger, rushed toward 
the fence. A few of the Americans occupied two or three 
houses and barns on the slope of Breed's Hill, and an- 
noyed, for a time, the left flank of the enemy. 

The artillery of the British effected its murderous pur- 
pose, raking the whole interior of the breastwork, driving 
its defenders into the redoubt, and sending the balls there 
after them, through the open sally-port. Lieut. Prescott, 
a nephew of the Colonel, had his arm disabled, and was 
told by his uncle to content himself with encouraging his 
men ; but having succeeded in loading his musket, he 
was passing the sally-port to seek a rest from which to 



49 

fire it, when he was killed by a cannon-ball. It was evi- 
dent that the intrenchments could no longer be maintain- 
ed, but the resolution to yield them only in the convulsion 
of the last effort, nerved every patriot arm. 

The British officers were seen to goad on some of their 
reluctant men with their swords. It was for them now 
to receive the fire, and to reserve their own till they could 
follow it by a thrust of the bayonet. Each shot of the 
provincials was true to its aim. Colonel Abercrombie, 
Majors Williams and Spendlove, fell. General Howe 
was wounded in the foot. Hand to hand, and face to 
face, were exchanged the last awful hostilities of that 
day. Only a ridge of earth divided the grappling com- 
batants, whose feet were slipping upon the gory sand, 
while they joined in the mortal strife. When the enemy 
found themselves received with stones, the missiles of a 
more ancient warfare, they knew that their work was 
nearly done, as they now contended with unarmed men. 
Young Richardson, of the Royal Irish, was the first who 
scaled the parapet, and he fell, as did likewise the first 
rank that mounted it, among whom Major Pitcairn, who 
had shed the first blood at Lexington, was shot by a 
negro soldier. It was only when the redoubt was crowd- 
ed with the enemy and the defenders in one promiscuous 
throng, and assailants on all sides were pouring into it, 
that Prescott, no less, but even more a hero, when he 
uttered the reluctant word, ordered a retreat. A longer 
trial would have been folly, not courage. Som.e of the 
men had splintered their musket-stocks in fierce blows, 
nearly all were defenceless, yet was there that left within 
them, in a dauntless soul, which might still help their 
country at its need. Prescott gave the crowning proof of 
his devoted and magnanimous spirit, when he cooled the 
heat of his own brain, and bore the bitter pang in his 
own heart, by commanding an orderly, and still resisting 
retreat. He was the hero of that blood-dycd sumiuit — 
the midnight leader and guard, the morning sentinel, the 
7 



50 

orator of the opening strife, the cool and deUbprate over- 
seer of the whole struggle, the well-skilled marksman of 
the exact distance at which a shot was certain death : he 
was the venerable chief in whose bright eye and steady 
nerve all read their duty ; and when conduct, skill and 
courage could do no more, he was the merciful deliverer 
of the remnant. Prescott was the hero of the day, and 
wherever its tale is told, let him be its chieftain. 

The troops in the redoubt now fought their pathway 
through the encircling enemy, turning their faces towards 
the foe, while they retreated with backward steps. Grid- 
ley, who had planned and defended the works, received a 
wound, and was borne off. Warren was among the last 
to leave the redoubt, and at a short distance from it, a 
musket-ball through his head killed him instantly. 
When the corpse of that illustrious patriot was recognised 
and identified the next morning by Dr. Jeffries, General 
Howe thought that this one victim well repaid the loss of 
numbers of his mercenaries. It is not strange that, both 
in English and American narratives of that day, and in 
some subsequent notices of it, Warren should have been 
represented as the commander of the provincial forces. 
His influence and his patriotism were equally well known 
to friend and foe. There is no more delicate task than 
to divide among many heroes the honors of a battle-field, 
and the rewards of devoted service. Yet the high-minded 
will always appreciate the integrity of the motive which 
seeks to distinguish between the places and the modes of 
service, where those who alike love their country enjoy 
the opportunity of securing the laurels of heroism and de- 
votion. The council-chamber and the forum, and the 
high place in the public assembly, offer to the patriot- 
statesman the opportunity for winning remembrance and 
honor to his name ; the battle-field must retain the same 
high privilege for the patriot-soldier, for there alone can 
he earn the wreath. Let the chivalry and the magna- 
nimity of Warren forever fill a brilliant page in our his- 



51 



tory, but let not a partial homage attach to him the honor 
to which another has a rightful claim. It was no part of 
his pure purpose, in mingling with his brethren on that 
field, to monopolize its honors, and to figure as its hero. 
It is enough that he stood among equals in devotion and 
patriotism. Let it be remembered that he did not approve 
the measure of thus challenging a superior enemy vv^ith 
such insufficient preparation : — the more honorable, there- 
fore, was his self-sacrifice, in giving the whole energy of 
his will to falsify the misgivings of his judgment. Here, 
then, is his claim, which, when fully allowed, leaves the 
honors of that summit to the leader of the heroic band. 

And while such was the issue at the redoubt, the left 
wing, under Putnam, aided by some reinforcements which 
had arrived too late, was making a vigorous stand at the 
rail fence. But the retreat at the redoubt compelled the 
resolute defenders to yield with slow and reluctant steps, 
as their flank was opened to the enemy. Putnam pleaded 
and cursed ; he commanded and implored the scattering 
bands to rally, and he swore that he would win them the 
victory. For his foul profanity he made a sincere con- 
fession before the church and congregation of which he 
was a member, after the war. On the day of the battle, 
his great and consuming purpose was to fortify Bunker 
Hill. To effect this, he passed and repassed between 
Cambridge and Charlestown, sending for tools to the re- 
doubt, where he does not appear to have been present 
during the action, and endeavoring to rally the flying even 
when there was no longer a hope. His furious ardor may 
or may not have needed the control of deliberate judg- 
ment, and of that essential characteristic of the soldier, 
which is termed ' conduct.' His courage was unques- 
tionable. I have fairly presented him and his services as 
a careful examination of all the authorities within my 
reach has enabled me to decide upon a point where wri- 
ters better informed than myself have diflered. I cannot 
regard Putnam either as the commander or the hero of 



52 



the day ; and while I would speak with great diffidence 
upon so delicate a point, I would still hope that my con- 
chisions in reference to it partake as much of truth as I 
am sure they do of impartiality. 

Pomeroy likewise implored the men to rally, but in 
vain. The last resistance at the rail fence restrained the 
enemy from cutting off the retreat of the provincials. 
Yet the enemy were in no condition to pursue, as they 
were alike exhausted, and were content with the little 
patch of ground which they had so dearly purchased. 
The provincials retreated to Cambridge by the neck, and 
by the Winter Hill road, taking with them only one of 
the six pieces of artillery which they had brought to the 
field. The battle had occupied about two hours, the pro- 
vincials retreating just before five o'clock. The British 
lay on their arms at Bunker Hill all night, discharging 
their pieces against the Americans who were safely en- 
camped upon Prospect Hill, at the distance of a mile. 

Prescott repaired to head-quarters to make return of 
his trust. He was indignant at the loss of the battle, and 
implored General Ward to commit to him three fresh reg- 
iments, promising with them to win back the day. But 
he had already honorably accomplished all that his coun- 
try might demand. He complained bitterly that the rein- 
forcements, which might have given to his triumph the 
completeness that was needed to make it a victory, had 
failed him. A year afterwards, when he was in the 
American camp at New York, he was informed how nar- 
rowly he had escaped with life. A British sergeant, who 
was brought into the camp, on meeting with Prescott 
there called him by name. Prescott inquired how or 
where he had known him. The man replied that he 
knew him well, and that his acquaintance began at the 
battle in Charlestown. Prescott had there been pointed 
out to him as the commander, and in the first two attacks 
he had singled him out and taken a deliberate aim. 
Though his position at each time was so favorable as to 



53 

convince him the shot would be fatal, yet Prescott had 
been unharmed. On the third attack, impelled by the 
same purpose, he had charged the commander at the 
point of the bayonet, but the strong arm and the sword 
of Prescott thrust aside the weapon, and the baffled ser- 
geant concluded him to be invulnerable. Prescott kindly 
presented the poor soldier with a gift of charity to relieve 
his disappointment. The pierced garments of the hero, 
preserved in his family, bear witness to the repeated 
efforts of his foe. 

The number of our troops in the action, including the 
occasional reinforcements, and those who came only to 
cover the retreat, did not exceed 4,000. Of these, 115 
were killed and missing, 30.5 were wounded, and 30 were 
taken prisoners; making our whole loss 450. Prescott' s 
regiment suffered most severely. 

The whole British loss was rated by the Provincial 
Congress, on their best information, at 1500, but Gage 
acknowledged only 1054, including 89 officers ; 226 being 
killed, and 828 wounded. 

Loud and agonizing was the mourning in Boston, when 
the wounded were committed to the crowded hospitals ; 
and the sympathies of the inhabitants were demanded 
alike for friends and foes. 

But though the sword was lifted against our fathers by 
their own brethren, and in a cause which we must pro- 
nounce to have been unrighteous and tyrannical, we feel 
impelled to pay a just tribute to the bravery and gallantry 
of the British officers and soldiers upon the field. To 
march boldly forward, as they did thrice, and bare their 
bosoms to the weapons of desperate men, was a trial of 
their spirit which allows us to withhold from them no 
praise or glory which we give to our fathers, save that 
which belongs to our fathers as the champions of the bet- 
ter cause. The highest honor we can bestow upon the 
heroism of the enemy, is, in regretting that the King and 
his ministers found such devoted servants. 



54 

Such is but a faint delineation, in feeble words, of the 
ac'ion which we commemorate. And now, if I were to 
say that the intrenching and the defence of Breed's Hill 
was the most important action in our revolutionary war, 
the assertion might be set down to the account of a rhe- 
torical exaltation of a theme committed to the hands of an 
orator for a festive occasion — and rival claimants might 
arise to vindicate the fame of our other battle-fields. Yet, 
without a word or a figure of exaggeration, the battle of 
June 17th may be placed first in importance in the calen- 
dar of our conflicts. The whole protracted struggle was 
decisively influenced by this, its opening contest. The 
battle was fought by the provincials in earnest, with de- 
termined spirit, with proud success, though not with final 
victory, and therefore it gave the impulse of a good begin- 
ning to the whole conduct of the war. Let us briefly re- 
view its results, that we may weigh its importance. 

This battle accomplished what, in all cases of strife and 
discord, it is very important yet very difficult to accom- 
plish — it distinguished the two contending parties, and 
brought them to an issue. There were then several links 
of union between England and the colonists, formed by 
the various orders, classes and coteries then gathered in 
this neighborhood, and by their diverse opinions. Some of 
our most honored and disinterested countrymen, and some 
of the British officers, engaged with extreme reluctance in 
the hostilities. We had among us not only tories and re- 
publicans, but timid and cautious hesitants, and attached 
friends to the restricted exercise of royal authority. There 
were moderate and immoderate men of both parties, neu- 
tral and lukewarm doubters of no party. While reading 
the history of the period, we readily imagine the thousand 
social ties and domestic relations, the civilities of neigh- 
borhood and the common interest in the land across the 
water, which might well make it a difficult thing, a work 
requiring time and even blood, to separate the people of 
the province into two parties distinct at every point. Had 



bo 

it not been for the affair at Lexington, it is probable that 
matters might have remained quiet for some time longer, 
and that the colonists would have wasted many more 
words of petition upon the ministry. Even after that 
battle, had the ministry expressed in strong terms their 
disapprobation of Gage's measure, and adopted a concilia- 
tory tone, the war might have been then averted. But 
the affair of the 17th June at once put a stop to any fur- 
ther halting between two opinions. 

Again, that action was of primary importance from the 
influence which it exercised upon our fathers, who, un- 
known to themselves, had before them a war of protracted 
length, partaking largely of reverse and discouragement. 
They learned this day what they might do in the confi- 
dence that God was on their side and that their cause was 
good. That work of a summer's night, was worth its 
price to them. They lacked discipline, artillery, bayonets, 
powder and ball, food, and — the greatest want of all — they 
lacked the delicious draught of pure, cool water for their 
labor-worn and heat-exhausted frames. They found that 
desperation would supply the place of discipline ; that the 
stock of a musket, wielded with true nerves, would deal a 
blow as deadly as the thrust of a bayonet ; and that a 
heavy stone might level an assailant as well as a charge 
of powder. As for food and water, the hunger they were 
compelled to bear unrelieved, and they cooled their brows 
only by the thick, heavy drops which poured before the 
sun. Yet it was their opening combat, and proudly did 
they bear away its laurels, even upon their backs, which 
the failure of ammunition and of reinforcements compelled 
them to turn to the enemy. Yes, they did show their 
backs once to those whose backs they had already seen 
twice ; and if they retreated once, it was only that they 
might save their faces for later and bolder opportunities of 
confronting the foe. It was their opening combat, and it 
decided the spirit and the hope of all their subsequent 
campaigns. They had freed themselves during the en- 



56 



gagement from all that natural reluctance which they had 
heretofore felt in turning their offensive weapons against 
the breasts of former friends, yes, even of kinsmen. On 
that eminence, the first bright image of liberty, of a free 
native land, kindled the eyes of those who were expiring 
in their gore, and the image passed between the living 
and the dying to seal the covenant, that the hope of the 
one, or the fate of the other, should unite them here or 
hereafter. It was the report of that battle, which, trans- 
mitted by swift couriers over the length and breadth of 
the continent, would every where prepare the spirit to fol- 
low it up with determined resistance to every future act 
of aggression. How can we exaggerate the relative im- 
portance of this day's action? Did it not in fact open the 
contest, dividing into two parties, not only those deter- 
mined for the ministry or the colony, but likewise all 
timid, hesitating, reluctant neutrals? It was difficult 
after this to avoid taking sides. Did it not at once render 
all reconciliation impossible, till it should offer itself in 
company with justice and liberty ? Did it not echo the 
gathering cry which brought together our people from 
their farms and workshops, to learn the art of war, that 
terrible art, which grows more merciful only as it is the 
more skilfully pursued 7 This day, then, needs no rheto- 
ric to magnify it in our revolutionary annals. After its 
sun went down, the provincials parted with all fear, hesi- 
tation and reluctance. They found that it was easier to 
fight ; the awful roar of the death-dealing arms associated 
itself in their minds with all their wrongs, and all their 
hopes, and with the sweet word of liberty. The pen with 
which petitions were written had been found to be power- 
less : words of remonstrance left no impression upon the 
air. There was but one resource. From the village 
homes and farm-houses around, amid the encouraging ex- 
hortations, as well as the tearful prayers of their families, 
the yeomen took from their chimney-stacks the familiar 
and well-proved weapons of a life in the woods, and felt 



57 

for the first time what it was to have a country, and re- 
solved for the first time that they would save their country 
or be mourned by her. 

And if further evidence be needed in support of the high 
importance which I have attached to this day's conflict, 
let me refer to the effect which the announcement of it 
produced in Great Britain, upon the ministry and the 
people. One fact painfully evident to the student of our 
revolutionary history, is, that the war was commenced by 
the ministry and allowed by the people under the grossest 
misapprehension of the character and courage of the in- 
habitants of this province. Parliament was in a state of 
perfect infatuation when it gave ear to the speeches that 
advised the measures of the ministry, and represented the 
enforcing of them as so easy a work. For though Parlia- 
ment had been warned by all the local information of our 
former Governor Pownall, by the philosophy of Burke, 
and the tender appeals of Lord Chatham, that conciliatory 
measures would be the only efficient measures, there was ei- 
ther stupidity, folly or madness in the self-conceited persua- 
sion, that a race of men who had left their native country to 
escape oppression, would consent to be oppressed in a new 
country redeemed by them from a wilderness, made hab- 
itable by virtuous toil, and endeared as always free. The 
last three English Governors of this province, and the min- 
istry at home, had represented the American people as 
wholly under the control of a few ambitious leaders, dema- 
gogues or revolutionists, who, by exciting speeches, spread 
enthusiasm among the multitude, cajoling and ffattering 
them with the enticing word — liberty. It was alleged in 
Parliament that the people would succumb, if their leaders 
could be silenced. This battle proved that a people who 
showed such a spirit, must be capable of originating some 
enthusiasm in themselves, as well as of being cajoled into 
it by others. They had been represented as cowards who 
dared to fire a musket only at a Ions- distance, and from 
behind a protection, and the people of England had been 
8 



58 

promised that one regiment of the King's troops should 
sweep the provincials off the continent. But after this 
battle the probability of such a result was reduced to this 
simple rule of three ; if so many of his Majesty's regiments 
were necessary to secure the square feet of ground occu- 
pied by Charlestown peninsula, how many would be 
needed to sweep the continent? 

The people of England were instructed by this day's 
news to estimate the bravery, the union, the determined 
purpose of the colonists. On this point I deem it impor- 
tant to enlarge. It was greatly in favor of our cause, that 
the unpopularity of the war among the mercantile classes 
of England, should be increased by such a representation 
of its progress, as would induce the pride of the British to 
listen at last to prudence. While the ministry flattered 
the people with fables about our pusillanimity and poverty, 
and called for new resources against us, promising that 
each demand should be the last, only the report of such 
poor success as attended their hostilities upon this penin- 
sula, could open the eyes of the British nation to the 
hopelessness of their measures. 

The account of the battle transmitted by General Gage, 
accompanied of course by numerous private letters, was 
received in London July 25th. The General estimated 
his loss at 226 killed, and 828 wounded. The ministry 
were dismayed, and for a time kept back the official an- 
nouncement from the Gazette. It was known, however, 
that government despatches had been received, and in 
order to draw forth their contents, some ingenious persons 
wrote from their imaginations what purported to be an 
account of the battle, and published it in the newspapers. 
By this fictitious statement, the regulars were said to have 
been defeated with great slaughter. Thus the adminis- 
tration were obliged to prepare their own statement for 
the Gazette as soon as possible. Even with a favorable 
garb thrown around its announcement, the official account 
shocked and alarmed the people. They waited with the 



69 

utmost anxiety for the representation which the provin- 
cials might give of the hattle, and to hear the measures 
of the Congress. They changed their opinion of us when 
they found tliat one square mile of our territory had cost 
them more than a thousand men. As the news of the 
engagement circulated in England, it called out popular 
expressions which exhibited the general dissatisfaction 
with the war. The official publications were made up 
from the accounts of Gage, Howe and Burgoyne ; they 
were replied to, even in London, with cutting sarcasm. 

Burgoyne, writing to Lord Stanley, had asserted that 
" the day ended with glory." To this it was well replied 
that a few more equally glorious victories would ruin the 
whole kingdom. He expressed regret in his letter that 
his nephew, the brother of Lord Stanley, had not been 
with him in the battery on Copp's Hill, as spectator of 
the battle from a safe [and somewhat cowardly] position, 
where two cannon-balls went a hundred yards above his 
head. He described in glowing language the conflagra- 
tion of Charlestown — "straight before us a large and 
noble town, in one bright blaze" — the flames wreathing 
the high timber spire of the church, the falling of whole 
streets, the burning of vessels on the stocks, and the roar 
of the cannon. The whole of his letter was ludicrously 
criticised. 

General Gage, writing to Lord Dartmoutn, the head of 
the war department, concludes thus : " the rebels are not 
the despicable rabble too many suppose them to be, and I 
find it owing to a military spirit encouraged among them 
for a few years past, joined with an uncommon degree of 
zeal and enthusiasm, that they are otherwise." The 
commentary of the newspaper critic on this remark, was ; 
" The Americans are either the cleverest fellows in the 
world at making strong lines in three or four hours, or 
the most desperate enemy in defending them." The re- 
port in London was, that General Gage was ordered not 
to hazard another engagement till he was rehiforced. 



60 

though it was doubted whether the provincials would 
leave this at his option ; that he was ordered to depart 
from Boston, after burning it, and to fortify himself upon 
Rhode Island, whence he might make descents upon the 
coast; and that 1000 stand of arms and 1000 Highlanders 
had been sent to Quebec. So high did sympathy for us 
rise in England, that on the 23d of August the King 
issued a proclamation against all in his realms who 
should aid, correspond with, or favor the rebels. It was 
found that the revenue so unblushingly promised in Par- 
liament, was to require a large outlay for its collection in 
the colonies. Instead of receiving taxes from us, they 
were obliged to send regiments of their own subjects, with 
foreign mercenaries, and coals, faggots, vinegar, porter, 
hay, vegetables, sheep, oxen, horses, clothing — to say- 
nothing of munitions of war — across 3000 miles of water, 
and even then, to anticipate, as the result proved, with 
good reason, that some of their richest transports would 
fall into the hands of these reluctant tax-payers. Some 
of the Highlanders who were induced to enlist by the 
representations of recruiting sergeants, were told that they 
were to take possession of some vacant farms in this coun- 
try, the owners of which had been driven into the inte- 
rior. They even received certificates that when the 
rebellion here was subdued, each of them should have a 
clear title to two Inuidred acres of land for himself, and 
fifty acres in addition for each member of his family. 

By a resolution of the Provincial Congress at Water- 
town, July 7th, the Committee of Safety prepared an 
account of the engagement on the 17th June, to be trans- 
mitted to Great Britain, for the sake of counteracting the 
influence of any misrepresentations on the part of Gen. 
Gage. The account was dated July 25, and sent to 
Arthur Lee, at London, who caused it to be published in 
the papers. But the sympathies and complaints of the 
English people were not left to be excited merely by doc- 
uments sent from this side of the water, and answered by 



61 

well-freighted transports from Britain. The people were 
made to witness some melancholy resnlts of the battle, 
which brought its pictures of sorrow to their own doors. 
On September 14th, a transport (the Charming Nancy,) 
arrived at Plymouth, having left Boston August 20th. 
On board were General Gage's lady, and 170 sick and 
wounded officers and soldiers, with 60 widows and chil- 
dren of the slain. The stench of the vessel was intolera- 
ble, but the condition of its human cargo was awful. 
Maimed and helpless, ragged and pined with sickness, 
many of them hundreds of miles from their home in Ire- 
land, — the sufferers, as they were landed and begged for 
charity in the streets, presented a most deplorable and 
wretched tale of the unnatural strife. Two more vessels 
with similar cargoes, which left Boston at the same time, 
were daily expected, and more were on their way. Thus 
was Boston relieved of a part of its helpless victims, and 
thus were the people of England most piteously besought 
to spare the blood of their own kinsfolk, rather than to 
make so fearful a sacrifice to national pride, to lust of 
dominion, and to the wealth expected from the taxation 
of the colonies. 

Nor did the conduct of the battle, on the part of the Brit- 
ish generals, escape severe scrutiny and censure. Plans 
were stated, and alternatives imagined, by which they 
might have secured a nearly bloodless victory. These 
complaints were made with good reason. A ship of war, 
some floating batteries, or the Cymetry transport, which 
drew but little water, might have been towed into Mystic 
river, and lying water-borne at low tide, (for during the 
heat of the strife the water was at ebb,) would have 
been within musket-shot of our left flank, and have ren- 
dered the rail fence useless. The regulars might have 
landed in the rear of the provincials, and thus have sur- 
rounded them, have incapacitated the breastwork, cut off 
a retreat, and occupied Bunker's Hill. Or, supposing it 
was most in accordance with military rule and prudence 



62 

that they should have landed as they did, in front, they 
should not have advanced in an extended line, firing at 
intervals, but formed into columns should have rushed 
forward, reserving their fire for the redoubt, and charging 
with the bayonet. Their first two attacks were disas- 
trous to themselves, but harmless to us. The simple 
truth seems to be, that the regular officers had a most des- 
picable opinion of the provincials, and thought that the 
smell of powder, the glancing of bright bayonets, and a 
well deployed line, would frighten them into flight. 
They were grievously mistaken. But after all, Avhen the 
dear-won victory was theirs, why did they not pursue to 
Cambridge under cover of their own ships, especially as 
towards, and after, the close of the battle, Charlestown 
was filled wilh British troops who were hurrying over 
from Boston ? 

Another result attending the news of the battle in Eng- 
land, was the immediate recall of General Gage. Just 
before the arrival of the news, despatches had been pre- 
pared, yet not transmitted to him, in which his future 
operations were directed. But these despatches, when 
sent, were accompanied by another, in which he was 
directed to give them to General Howe, who was to suc- 
ceed him in the command, and in which he was advised 
that it was his Majesty's pleasure that he should imme- 
diately return to give information and counsel at home. 
It is likewise a remarkable, but a very manifest fact, that 
the disastrous character of this battle, the desperate cour- 
age of the provincials, and the hopeless aspect which the 
designs of the ministry began in consequence to wear, 
completely unmanned General Howe, deprived him of all 
energy in the conduct of the war, and entailed upon 
him disgrace. 

Such were the eifects produced by this battle upon our 
enemies. They might be indefinitely enlarged upon, 
traced out in British petitions and addresses to the 
throne, in public opposition meetings held throughout 



63 

the kingdom, in the reluctance of the soldiers to enlist in 
that cause and the high bounty promised to their services, 
and especially in the increasing number of the avowed 
and secret friends of the colonies in England. 

While such were the results of the battle on the other 
side of the water, its effects upon our own army and cause 
contribute to magnify its importance. I might trace out 
the influence of that battle through the whole war, might 
refer to the spirit and determination and self-respect 
which it infused into the provincials. I might find in 
every subsequent engagement of the war some individuals 
who had learned their military elements on June 17. But 
I will confine myself to a statement of its immediate 
results which were favorable to our cause. Many of our 
officers had received their commissions from Great Britain, 
and were in the receipt of half-pay at the time of the 
battle, which they of course resigned. 

The British took possession of, and strongly fortified 
Bunker and Breed's Hills, and posted their advanced 
guards upon the neck. This division of their forces be- 
tween the two peninsulas was in one point of view advan- 
tageous to them, as it enlarged their quarters at a season 
of the year when Boston, crowded as it was, and made 
unwholesome by impure air, seemed as one large hospital. 
The cool heights of Charlestown were a refreshing refuge ; 
yet they were compelled to a great increase of their labor 
in defending their works against an enemy so near to them, 
who insulted and vexed them and made them feel the 
degradation of their position. During the ensuing inclem- 
ent winter, the troops in Charlestown were obliged to 
live in tents and were exposed to great sufferings, and to 
driving snow-storms. Neither did the possession of Charles- 
town give the enemy any facility in obtaining supplies 
of fresh provisions, in which the country abounded, but 
of which they had enjoyed little, if any, since the battle of 
Lexington. In this respect their condition was trying in 
the extreme. They could procure no fresh meat, vegeta- 



64 

bles, milk, or fuel, save what came in by water. The 
provincials took the live stock and the hay off of the har- 
bor islands, and intercepted many of the vessels entering 
with supplies. In a letter from an officer in Boston to a 
gentlemen in London, dated July 2.5, the writer says, they 
felt themselves worse off than the rebels ; as to numbers, 
hke a few children in a large crowd ; that the provincials 
daily grew more bold, menacing insolently, and leading 
the regulars to fear that, when the short nights came, the 
threats would be executed. He adds, " They know our 
situation as well as we do ourselves, from the villains that 
are left in town, who acquaint them with all our proceed- 
ings, making signals by night with gunpowder, and at 
day, out of the church steeples. About three weeks ago, 
three fellows were taken out of one of the latter, who con- 
fessed that they had been so employed for seven days. 
Another was caught last week swimming over to the 
rebels with one of their General's passes in his pocket. 
He will be hanged in a day or two." The writer adds 
other instances of the boldness of the rebels in beating in 
the advanced guard on the British lines at Roxbury and 
destroying the guard-house, and in the pillaging and 
destruction of the lighthouse by some yankees who landed 
from boats, while a British ship of war lay becalmed 
within a mile. 

And what a cheering spectacle was set before the eyes 
of our fathers when the American army, intrenching upon 
all the beautiful and elevated hills which bound the semi- 
circle around us, confined their enemy to these two penin- 
sulas. There was no concealing the fact that the minis- 
terial troops felt deeply the degradation of their situation, 
and were dispirited by it to a degree that weakened their 
moral and physical energies through the whole war. 
From the best information that Washington, on assuming 
his command July 3, could obtain, he rated the number of 
the enemy at 11,500, while the provincials numbered 16,000 
to 17,000. The sentries of the opposing forces stationed 



65 

upon Charlestowii neck were near enough to converse to- 
gether. Wc are forcibly reminded of that admirable trait in 
the character of Washington — a scrupulous attention to mi- 
nutiae — as well as of the spirit of patriotism which sustained 
us under the war, by several of the '• orders" issued by our 
General under these circumstances. He expressly forbade 
that any post of peculiar responsibility, such as that of sen- 
try or guard at the advanced lines upon Roxbnry or 
Charlestown necks, should be committed to any other than 
a native of this country, who had a wife and family in it, 
and was known to be attached to its interests. " This 
order is to be considered as a standing one, and the officers 
are to pay obedience to it at their peril." 

The contrast between the health, and the food, of 
the regulars and of the provincials was extremely 
tantalizing. Hand-bills were printed at Cambridge, and 
sent on a favorable wind across the lines into the British 
camp. On one of these, an address to the British soldiers 
bears the following contrasted bills of fare, in the two 
camps : — 



Pkospect Hill. 
I. Seven dollars a month. 
II. Frnsh provisions and in plenty. I II. Rotten Salt Pork. 



Bunker's Hill. 
I. Threepence a day. 



III. Health. 

IV. Freedom, ease, affluence, and a 

«rood farm. 



III. The Scurvy. 

IV. Slavery, beggary and want. 



In reviewing the whole struggle whose opening contest 
we this day commemorate, we have a duty to perform as 
patriots and as christians ; let us hope that there be no 
discord in our sentiments or purposes as we apply to our- 
selves those two epithets. As patriots we would vindicate 
our country, but as christians wc must regret the war, the 
civil strife, the bloody conflict, so utterly irreconcileable 
with the spirit and precepts of our religion. 

In the English reviews of the conduct of the war on the 
part of the Americans, we are to repel two principal 
9 



66 

charges made against our fathers. The first charge is of 
old standing, the second is recent. 

First. — It was said that Independence — absohite freedom 
from EngHsh control — was from the beginning the secret 
object of the American patriots, disguised for a time under 
fawning expressions of loyalty, words of mere compliment 
and hypocritical pretensions, and that this secret object 
was cunningly developed by degrees and cautious pro- 
cesses as the minds of the people were prepared. Of 
course this charge is to be sustained or repelled only by doc- 
umentary evidence. Independence can be shown to have 
been the primary object of our patriots only by their own 
statements, and it can be shown to have been their secret 
object, only by the evidence of private papers, in which, 
under the rose, they express themselves in direct opposi- 
tion to their pretended sentiments in their public docu- 
ments. Such evidence cannot be produced, it does not 
exist, and it never did exist. The specific charge is false. 
Undoubtedly some of the far-seeing patriots might have 
imagined or anticipated the result of the contest in its 
early stages — indeed not only did American patriots ima- 
gine the result, but English patriots, the opponents of the 
war in Parliament, particularly Lord Chatham, Mr. 
Burke, and Governor Pownall, predicted the result. No 
imputation of covert designs can rest upon our patriots. 
There is a natural working towards the far-off but des- 
tined result in the earliest stages of an action, and long 
before the result is known or contemplated by human 
agents. 

Besides, let it be remembered that if there was a growth 
and development in American resistance leading inevitably 
to independence, so was there a growth and development in 
British oppression, leading inevitably to tyranny. Ameri- 
can measures of combination, of non-importation and non- 
consumption, of providing minute-men and military stores, 
and of collecting an army, ran exactly parallel with min- 
isterial measures, in successive taxes, in quartering an 



67 

army upon the province in time of peace, in interfering 
with the General Court, in committing the payment of the 
salaries of the Governor and Judges to the King, instead 
of leaving it with the colonists, in taking the appointment 
of the councillors from the people and giving it to the 
King, in exempting several officials from the colony tax, 
in fortifying Roxbury neck, in a long succession of insults, 
and in a hostile incursion into the country. If the Ameri- 
can patriots are to be accused of cherishing secretly the 
purpose of independence, while in the early stage of the 
conflict they spoke loyal words, why may not the British 
be accused of cherishing secretly the intention of tyranny 
while in the early stage of the conflict they spoke the 
words of parental tenderness and protection '? When our 
Declaration of Independence was known in England, there 
were loud and insulting sneers upon the hypocritical pre- 
tensions of our former Congressional addresses and peti- 
tions to the King, and especially of that address, signed 
by all the members, and called " the Olive Branch," 
which was presented to the King, August 1775, and to 
which no answer was returned. The Declaration was 
spoken of as the removal of the veil, the disclosure of long- 
cherished purposes, and the people of England were gen- 
erally more inclined to the continuance of the war, than 
they had been to its commencement. 

Yet there is abundant evidence to prove that the result 
of independence was at first far from the minds of the 
great mass, deprecated by many, very slowly admitted to 
the thoughts, kept at a distance by repeated and renewed 
addresses and petitions, made familiar only by familiarity 
with oppression, and at last independence was declared 
with mingled feelings partaking of justice and exaspera- 
tion, of despair and hope. Such, certainly, was the case 
with the people, nor can it be proved that it was other- 
wise with the leaders. Washington, in a letter to the 
President of Congress, dated February 9th, 1776, five 
months before the Declaration of Independence, gives 



68 

evidence that even he thonjjht of peace upon other terms. 
He says, " 1 am entirely ofyonr opinion, that, should an 
accommodation take place, the terms will be severe or 
favorable, in proportion to our ability to resist, and that 
we ought to be on a respectable footing to receive their 
armaments in the spring." 

The second, the more recent charge, as observed by 
Professor h^myth. '• the most serious charge that can be 
hrouuht against the American lenders in this dispute,'" is, 
that without the prospect of a fair chance of success, the 
American leaders hurried their comitrymen into meas- 
ures, regarded and punishable as rebellion. It is said 
that the chance of success was not a fair one ; that though 
the American leaders might have foreseen their ditticul- 
tics, they could not have foreseen, they would not have 
been justified in imagining, the failure of the British. But 
wlio were the rulers, who were the leaders, that led the 
people into these measures 7 They were not self-consti- 
tuted advisers and demagogues, hurrying on the unthink- 
ing and the unwilling. The leaders were led by the peo- 
ple in this, our revolution ; they were called out, delega- 
ted, appointed, by town meetings, and popular gather- 
ings : they spoke the minds, and were the instruments oi 
the people. The leaders did not commence hostilities. 
The people passed the resolutions for non-importation and 
non-consumption, which on our part brought on the trou- 
ble, aud in a mass the)' chose, they cheered on. advised 
and accompanied their leaders. And there was a fair 
chance of succeeding in all that was attempted or ahncd 
at, at first. The stamp act had been repealed on account 
of the resistance which it met with, and it was hoped 
that other otFensive measures Avould yield in the same 
way. After a while, however, the leaders, in discharge 
of their duty, did lead and advise. They urged on the 
people, excited and encouraged them, as it was right they 
should do. Tims patriotism, in reviewing that dreadful 
civil contest, can justify the measures of our fathers, at 



69 

least by the rules of war and the customs of nations. 
They were blameless in the code of honor. 

And how shall the Christian review that civil war^ that 
conflict bet^veen brethren, decided by the flowing of 
human blood ? To the principles of peace societies, lately 
promulgated and advocated among civilized nations, we 
must allow this much, that no complete vindication can 
be made for any war or battle which shall be consistent 
with the spirit and lessons of Christianity. The C^ospcl 
of Jesus Christ will not countenance, or justify, or allow 
a resort to arms. Yet, and here it seems to me that the 
advocates of peace principles apply the instruments of 
their reform too much to war itself, rather than to the 
causes of war — yet Christianity not only refuses to justify 
a resort to arms, but Christianity condemns the practice 
of those wrongs which result in war. Condemning the 
result, Christianity must of course condemn the more, the 
successive steps which lead to that result. Here, then, is 
the question — whether as Christians we shall not rather 
deplore the accumulation of abuses which must necessarily 
end in strife, than the strife itself If this be so, then, it 
may be that war in some instances may be justified, in as 
far as it is a result which cannot be averted, a result of 
abuses which ought to have been restrained or redressed, 
before it was too late. 

There are persons among us who have lately raised 
the question whether our revolutionary war was justifia- 
ble on peace principles. In one point of view the ques- 
tion provokes a smile. It is somewhat as if a man who 
had crammed himself with a luxurious dinner, should 
impede its digestion by doubting whether he had come 
honestly by the dinner. In another point of view the 
question is a serious one, as it involves the profoundest 
principles of moral and political science. Yet let not the 
indignation of the Christian fall so much upon the war, 
Avhich may be the unavoidable result, as upon the wrongs, 
the grievances, and the tyrannical oppression which neces- 



70 

sarily end in the war. The profession of the soldier has 
received undeserved abuse. Soldiers, indeed, do the fight- 
ing, but it ought to be remembered that others besides 
soldiers bring on the quarrel, and then leave it to soldiers 
to be finished. 

I can realize in my imagination the direful and accu- 
mulated miseries of war ; but the question to be decided 
when a war is to be hazarded, is, whether these miseries 
are greater than the evils which are sought to be redressed 
by a war. If there are miseries in war, there are miseries 
likewise in slavish subjection, in the bondage of one terri- 
tory and people to another territory and people, separated 
from them by an ocean. England has now unwilling 
tributaries and dependencies, with Ireland at the head of 
the list. Ireland struggles in vain against unjust and 
oppressive measures; we struggled with success, and 
bore the miseries of war. Which people now enjoy the 
preferable condition, the Irish or the Americans '? All the 
accumulated miseries of war are felt at the time, yet they 
do not avert the war. In the preparation of bandages 
and the erection of hospitals, in the burying of the dead 
on the battle-field, and in the houseless beggary of the 
widow and the orphan, the miseries of war are sorely 
felt at the moment, yet they do not avert the war. These 
miseries are all neutralized by some pressing, some incit- 
ing wretchedness or fear, which reaches deeper into the 
heart. We cannot paint or imagine those miseries as the 
sufferers experience them — they meet them in all their 
horrors, yet they meet them knowingly, by choice, by 
preference, before what they must endure to purchase 
peace by submission. When the mother receives in her 
village home the tidings that her husband and her eldest 
son fell upon the last field of conflict, she will arm her 
second son, and send him forth with sadness, yet with 
free choice, to meet the perils of the next action. 

And what patriot or Christian comparing the events of 
this day, which have given it an imperishable title in our 



71 



annals, with the prosperity and happiness with which we 
now commemorate it, can fail to feel a glad and holy 
influence working upon his heart 1 Our retrospect of the 
past should enforce our duty as based upon our gratitude. 
Patriotism is a word which we may hear everywhere, 
and while the politician always uses it in justification of 
his cause, let us remember that it is but a word which is 
the common property of human mouths. But patriotism 
as a moving impulse, working with spells of power on the 
heart, and inciting to personal sacrifices for one's country 
and one's posterity, has been forever vindicated as a real, 
yes, a religious sentiment, by the contrasted prospects of 
carnage once, of prosperity now, upon which the sun has 
shone on that summit. It will require no strong effort 
of the imagination to bring the slain of that battle to unite 
in these our commemorative services. Their ashes and 
their blood are always with us — they are mingled with 
the soil and the verdure of the hill-top, and when liberty 
is our theme, their spirits, which went forth from the clay 
in a shout of glory for liberty, return again and exalt our 
theme. And if they are with us, they ask but one ques- 
tion, and look to us for an answer — it is this. We now 
enjoy what they died in agony to secure for us. They 
ask us if the inheritance is worthy of its purchase ? And 
if it be worthy of the blood which purchased it, let us 
ask ourselves if it be not worthy of the righteousness in 
heart and life which is required to retain it ? 

One word, in conclusion, of serious counsel, the place 
where I stand, and the office which I discharge, alike 
require that I should speak. I have been compelled to 
use the term enemies, to express the relation which the 
counsellors and the soldiers of the land of our fathers 
once sustained towards the people of this republic. The 
term enemies has now lost its meaning, as applied to 
them — it comes into use only as the counterpart to our 
designation of rebels. Let every feeling of enmity then 
be banished from the present while we survey the past. 



72 

If that monumental pillar, which is now so rapidly and 
so boldly rearing its solid shaft towards the heavens, is 
ever to excite hate or passion in any Briton or American 
who shall gaze upon it, may the next flash of lightning 
rend it into ruin ! Beneath its foundation are mingled in 
quiet companionship the ashes of friend and foe, and as 
closely are our national interests associated with the pros- 
perity and the glory too, of the land of our fathers. I 
may venture to illustrate the intimacy of this dependence 
by the statement of a pleasing and a somewhat remarka- 
ble fact. I have sought to pay a deserved tribute to the 
heroic conduct of Colonel William Prescott. His son, 
who bears his name, is known and respected by all who 
hear me, as a Judge and a Counsellor. There is yet 
another Avho bears that worthy name in connection with 
public distinction. I refer to the author of that beautiful 
and interesting history, which has been justly esteemed 
abroad as the first literary production of our country. 
Over the shelves of the library in which that history was 
composed, two swords are now crossed in amicable union 
— one was wielded in the redoubt upon yonder summit, 
by the gallant Prescott ; the other, upon the same day, 
was in the hands of Captain Linzee, commander of the 
sloop of war Falcon, then lying at the foot of the hill. 
Crossed as we may say upon that day, in deadly strife, 
how have they thus been brought into amicable union? 
The minister of God made harmony between them by 
consecrating the vows of matrimony between the grand- 
children of the combatants. Let the peace and good will 
thus established between the leaders of the strife, while 
the edges of their swords are blunted by their blades — 
let this happy result, which is something more than an 
emblem, be the pledge of mutual dependence and love 
between the people of the nations whose imnatural con- 
flict we now dismiss once more to the oblivion of the 
past. )^ J 



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